Introducing OER for Teacher Development in African Universities presentation from 1st UNISA ODL Conference 5 - 7 September 2012. By Greig Krull and Tony Mays.

1. Introducing OER for Teacher
Development in African Universities
Greig Krull and Tony Mays
UNISA ODL Conference
5 September 2012

2. Outline
• Challenges
• Initiative
• Assumptions
• Capacity-building Engagements
• Lessons Learned
• Future Work
• Q&A

3. Challenges
• Need to increase teacher
enrolments and throughput
• Static or declining state subsidies
• Keep teaching at the cutting edge
of the discipline
• Need to constantly update
learning resources

4. Initiative
• Support African Universities to make greater use of OERs
• Individual and collaborative support to create and share high
quality OER materials for teaching and learning
• Access to evaluating, adapting, using and sharing of
quality educational resource materials
• Creation and use of a sustainable OER support
infrastructure
• Creation and sustainability of OER networks and
communities
• Application of relevant educational technologies

5. Initiative Assumptions
Structured engagement
OER can be sourced
with OER provides
and adapted to meet
opportunities to
specific curriculum
improve the quality of
needs of African
higher education
institutions
provision
Institutions can OERs can potentially
African institutions can
establish conditions reduce the time and
apt and use OER
that enable them to other resources
published by other
publish OER for further needed to service
African institutions
adaptation and use curriculum needs

6. OER Life Cycle
Find/Get
Share/ Create/
Redistribute Remix
Use and Localise/
Refine Adapt
From:
Wiley, D. (2008) http://www.wikieducator.org/ OER_Handbook/ educator/ OER_Lifecycle

7. Pilot Sites

8. Capacity-building Workshop 1
• Aim: Explore how informed engagement with OER can
support curriculum development and renewal processes
• Outline:
– Nature of OER
– Open licensing possibilities
– Find, evaluate and adapt OER
– Learner Support in ODL provision (NISTCOL only)
• UDSM outcome: Process for the development and review of
courses and materials
• NISTCOL outcome: Process to prioritise the development and
review of courses and materials

9. Capacity-building Workshop 2
• Aim: Build capacity for academics to design elearning
materials, incorporating OERs
• Outline:
– Rethinking teacher education, assessment and learning activities
– Search for and incorporate OERs
– Implement course design elements in Moodle
• UDSM outcome: Implementation Plan to develop, review and
publish pilot courses as OERs
• NISTCOL outcome: Implementation Plan to develop, review and
publish Education Leadership and Management Programme
(migrate from diploma to degree level)

10. Lessons Learned
• Practical engagement and concrete examples
• Better to work from the premise of OER integration from the start than to
‘reverse engineer’
• Need to revisit issues of copyright/ fair use/ licensing
• OER in service of curriculum needs; not an end in themselves …
• Part of a natural progression from information transmission lectures to
problem- and resource-based learning (and increasingly ODL provision)
• Integration of different media for different learning purposes and needs
• Iterative processes: formative peer feedback for improvement
• Hence: Opened discussion at a deep philosophical and pedagogical level on
ODL provision, elearning and learning communities

11. Future Work
• Refine and publish courses as OERs
• Already published: NISTCOL module on
Numeracy
• In process: NISTCOL resources in
Science and Social Science Ed
• In process: UDSM MUCE resources in
MST and SS and Language
• Inter-institutional interest group
discussion fora through OER Africa
website –
ECD, Maths, Science, SS, ELM, SNE
• Moving locus of responsibility from OER
Africa to interest group leaders across
multiple institutions

12. Q&A
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Thank you
Tony Mays and Greig Krull
tonymays@vodamail.co.za
greigk@saide.org.za