This document discusses open educational resources (OER) in Africa and their potential role in increasing access to higher education on the continent. It notes that African universities face pressure to expand access while dealing with underfunding, and that OER could help by increasing the availability of high-quality learning materials at low cost. The document outlines challenges in African higher education like dependence on lectures and limited resources. It argues that OER, if institutionalized, could help build capacity by providing educators with free or low-cost tools and content to create educational materials. A vision is presented of vibrant African universities playing a critical role through open development and sharing of intellectual capital.

1. OER in Africa
Alternative Modes of Access
to Higher Education
2011 IAU International Conference
Strategies for Securing Equity in Access
and Success in Higher Education
Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya
Friday, 18th November 2011
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2. Who we are
OER Africa
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3. The OER Concept
• Educational resources that are freely available for
use by educators and learners, without an
accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees.
• OER is not synonymous with online learning or e-
learning;
• Within an African context, it is anticipated that many
of the resources produced – while shareable in a
digital format (both online and via offline formats
such as CD-ROM) – will be printable.
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4. Setting the Scene
• African universities are dealing with significant
pressure to increase access to HE programmes
• Most institutions are having to increase enrolments
despite structural under-funding to discharge this
core function effective
• Most programmes (including many at postgraduate
level) rely heavily on lecturing as a primary mode of
transmission of content
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5. Five Challenges for Educators
Laurillard, D. (2001). Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Learning Technologies.
Routledge Falmer
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6. Some Challenges to
Higher Education in Africa
Dependence on lectures:
• Too few learning resources for learners and
lecturers in African universities, and many of those
available are too expensive to be purchased by
universities or students.
• Limited ICT infrastructure to gain access to up-to-
date information available on the Internet and
participate in inter-institutional, geographically
dispersed collaborative activities.
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7. What are we learning?
OER & improved teaching and learning:
• effective use of teaching and learning resources
(RBL) can be more effective than some forms of
contact, e.g. rote transfer of content via lectures.
• judicious mix of teaching strategies may serve to
free up time of academics from delivery of content,
to instead, investing time in curriculum and
resource development, more problem-based
interaction and more varied assessment strategies
that do not focus on rote recall of content.
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8. 8

9. Nursing Education in Africa
Resource Details
University Certificate in
Resource Name :
Midwifery
Kamuzu College of Nursing This CD ROM has been developed to support the
UCM and upgrading midwifery programmes. It
combines a number of new strategies that are being
Resource Description : piloted by MCH department to respond to the national
needs within the Health sector. These include reducing
maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in
relation to Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 & 6.
Resource Author : University of Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing
Resource Source : University of Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing
nursing, Problem Based Learning, maternal
Resource Tags : and neonatal morbidity, Computer based
education,
Resource Type : Modules, Training Notes/Materials/Tutorials
Resource Year : 2009
Resource Licensing
Creative Commons: Attribution-Non Commercial
Condition :
Share Alike 2.5
http://www.oerafrica.org/ResourceResults/tabi
Resource Media Type : Text/HTML
d/1562/mctl/Details/id/37994/Default.aspx
Resource Language : English
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10. The UNESCO OER Platform
Find, Compare, Build and Share: stakeholders can freely use the
UNESCO base product to find and compare content, copy and
build their unique content, and share their adaptation on the
UNESCO OER Platform
Translations: significantly higher than the 6 languages from
UNESCO
Localization: incorporating the more relevant and superior quality
and quantity of the national or regional literature base on the
subject area;
Innovation: the creation of new, customized versions, e.g. Guide
on Internet Access for Disabled Journalists based on the original
UNESCO “The Net for Journalists”
Offline editing: critically important for countries with poor internet
Mobile phone access: taking advantage of 5 billion access points

11. The 1st UNESCO OER Product
“UNESCO Model Curricula for Journalism Education”
Generic, adaptable, fully-prescriptive Curricula:
– Course descriptions
– Pedagogical approaches
– Mode, weekly class agenda, number of teaching hours
– Recommended text
– Grading and assessment protocols
Available in 6 official languages + Nepali, Portuguese
Adapted by 65+ institutions in 54 countries with backlog
The OER Platform allows a new journalism school to:
– easily find courses,
– compare how other schools have adapted them, and
– freely copy and adapt the most suitable courses

12. OER has the Potential
1. To increase availability of high quality, relevant and need-
targeted learning materials;
2. To reduce the cost of accessing educational materials;
3. To allow adaptation of materials and possibly contribute
to enabling learners to be active participants in
educational processes;
4. To achieve collaborative partnership of people working in
communities of practice, preferably across/within
institutions;
5. To build capacity in African higher education institutions
by providing educators with access, at low or no cost, to
the tools and content required to produce high quality
educational materials.
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13. Why institutionalize OER?
• Open licensing provides a cost-effective means to
increase investment in creating more effective
teaching and learning environments using
resource-based learning.
• To be effective and sustainable, such strategic
decisions will likely need to be accompanied by
review of institutional policies.
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14. Conditions for institutionalizing OER
• Policy Review – an OER policy should aim to encourage
academics to publish their materials by focussing on
incentives and also providing opt- out provisions. In terms
of implementation, it is important to work with the willing.
• Champions – individuals or units that demonstrate passion
and credibility, are critical if OER is to take hold. Need for
both Senate level and implementation level involvement.
• Skills – not all academics necessarily have the skills to
develop educational resources – whether openly licensed –
or otherwise. Academics are usually employed as
discipline experts not materials developers with the
knowledge of how to search or tag.
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15. A Vision for Higher Education in
Africa:
• Vibrant, sustainable African higher
education institutions that play a critical role
in building and sustaining African societies
and economies, by producing the continent’s
future intellectual leaders through free and
open development and sharing of common
intellectual capital.
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16. This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Thank you
Catherine Ngugi
OER Africa Project Director
catherine.ngugi@oerafrica.org
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