The document discusses the importance of open education in higher education. It defines open education as educational resources, tools, and practices that are free of legal, financial, and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared, and adapted digitally. Open education maximizes the power of the internet to make education more affordable, accessible, and effective. The document then discusses open licensing and how the University of Cape Town supports publishing teaching materials under open licenses like Creative Commons to promote open sharing of knowledge and creation of open educational resources. Specific case studies of academics at UCT developing open textbooks are also summarized.

1. Why Open Education Matters in Higher
Education?
By
Glenda Cox
University of Cape Town
2023

2. Chair of OE Global
conference, Cape
Town, 2017

3. What is Open
Education?
Open Education
encompasses resources,
tools and practices that are
free of legal, financial, and
technical barriers and can
be fully used, shared and
adapted in the digital
environment. It maximizes
the power of the Internet to
make education more
affordable, accessible and
effective (SPARC).

4. “Open Movement”
The Open Movement
Open Source
Software
Open Access
Open Licences
Open Science
Open Society
4

5. movement

6. COPYRIGHT AND
CREATIVE
COMMONS
LICENSING

7. IP policy at UCT
● UCT is one of the five universities in the country where academics are allowed to retain copyright over their teaching
materials and thus turn them into OER.
● As the UCT IP Policy states:
● UCT automatically assigns to the author(s) the copyright...in...course materials, with the provision that UCT retains a
perpetual, royalty-free, nonexclusive licence to use, copy and adapt such materials within UCT for the purposes of
teaching and or research. (UCT, 2011, p.15)
● The policy goes on to state that “UCT supports the publication of materials under Creative Commons licences to promote
the sharing of knowledge and the creation of Open Education Resources. UCT undertakes certain research projects that
seek to publish the research output in terms of a Creative Commons licence” (UCT, 2011, p.15).
● This opportunity is further reinforced by UCT’s Open Access Policy which promotes “the sharing of knowledge and the
creation of open education resources” (UCT, 2014, p.3).
● Plus: OpenUCT Institutional Repository, OER grants for scholars who want to turn their teaching materials into OER, the
regular OER workshops and training sessions held by the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) and the
legal advice scholars can obtain when licensing their materials as OER.

8. A collection of exclusive rights, given to creators and
authors to protect their original works
Definition of copyright

9. All rights reserved
May not reproduce
Fair use / Fair dealing for
classroom use
Permission / royalty payments
for reproduction
May not use on the Internet

11. Traditional © designed
for old distribution
models
The problem:

12. Alternative copyright licensing
Previously copyright was binary: All rights retained or public
domain
Now alternative licensing options such as the GNU General Public License
(mostly used for opensource software)
and Creative Commons provide a range of options where
Some rights are reserved
Public
Domain
Copyright©
Public
Domain
Some rights reserved Copyright©

14. Summary - Open Licenses

15. Open Textbooks case study

16. Disclaimer
Initiated as a three-year (2018–2021) research, advocacy and
implementation project funded by the Canadian IDRC, following in wake of
Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) and
other CILT open education initiatives (since 2007). Now an institutionally
funded initiative.
Digital Open Textbooks for Development
Bianca Masuku
Researcher
Michelle Willmers
Publishing &
Implementation Manager
Dr Glenda Cox
Principal Investigator

17. ● Digital, freely available collections of scaffolded teaching
and learning content
● published under an open licence
● with affordances for integrated multimedia and third-party
content
● published via platforms and in formats that provide
affordances for content delivery on a range of devices, print
and low bandwidth access strategies
Example: Open Textbooks

18. UCT open textbook authors in the DOT4D study
Kensleyrao
Apajee
Mechanical
Engineering
Chris Barnett & Cesarina Edmonds-
Smith
Chemistry
Stella Papanicolaou
Architecture
Dr Juan Klopper
Surgery
A/Prof Maria Keet,
Computer Science
Jonathan Shock,
Mathematics
Dr James
Lappeman,
Marketing
Tim Low,
Statistics
Dr Michael Held,
Orthopaedic
Surgery
A/Prof. Abimbola
Windapo
Construction
Dr Claire Blackman
Mathematics

19. Read about the journeys these
academics went on in developing
their open textbooks; including
their motivations, challenges,
insights around working with
students and sustainability factors.
https://openbooks.uct.ac.za/uct/ca
talog/book/37

20. Findings

21. 1. Economics
Student protest #fees must fall
https://africanarguments.org/2021/06/fallisms-faultlines-the-paradoxes-of-fees-must-fall/
openstax
We visited Rice University and spoke with students about
their perspectives on free textbooks. Check back tomorrow
to see another student’s perspective. #ForStudentsForever

22. Open Textbooks save money

23. 2. Culture and representation
#Rhodesmustfall
https://www.buzzfeed.com/husseinkesva
ni/oxford-campaign-rhodes-must-fall
https://www.educationworld.in/south-
africa-must-fall-protests-report/

24. Open textbooks for curriculum change

25. 25
3.Copyright vs legally sharing

26. •Glenda Cox @Glencox
"Legal,
copyright and IP
is everyone's
business". Laura
Czerniewicz.
#OASymp2016
@ROER4D @CILT_UCT

27. Open textbooks are openly licensed

28. 4. Students as partners

29. Open textbooks for collaboration and
co-creation

30. ● Digital, freely available collections of scaffolded teaching and learning content
● published under an open licence
● with affordances for integrated multimedia and third-party content
● published via platforms and in formats that provide affordances for content delivery on a
range of devices, print and low bandwidth access strategies
● through collaborative, inclusive authorship, quality assurance and publishing
approaches
● that can be leveraged in sustainable models of open textbook production for social
justice and transformation.
Open textbooks > Collaboration > Inclusion >
Social justice > Sustainability
Example: Open Textbooks

31. Social
Justice
Open
Education
Open
Textbook
● Open licences
● Localisation
● Voices
● Free
● Digital
affordance:adaptability
● Co-creation
● Economic ‘distribution’
● Cultural ‘recognition’
● Political ‘representation’

32. “Inclusivity is a key dimension of both
social justice and sustainability, in that
multiple voices are required in order to
achieve more equal epistemic
representation”(Cox, Masuku and Willmers
2022)

33. Why now for departments?
● Increase institutional visibility, advancing competitiveness,
attracting students and resources
● Promote effective social responsiveness
● Improve recruitment by helping the right students find the
right programmes
● Enhance teaching coherence across courses
● Ensure better long-term archiving, curation and reuse of
teaching materials
● Attract alumni as life-long learners
33

34. Why now – individually?
● Profile teaching and pedagogical idea
sharing
● Create record of teaching for teaching
portfolio
● Foster connections between other
colleagues, departments and even other
universities (especially cross-disciplinary
studies)
● Increase impact of teaching materials
● Extend use of teaching materials to high
school learners and life-long learners
Individual
34

35. A Call to organise open education…..
What are we organising for?
What are we organising
against?
The current emphasis on market value
of HE
(via Neoliberalism)
Technological monopolies (technology
is never neutral)
Perpetuating injustices
Racism
Economic exclusion
Competition for gain
●Equity
●Access
●Intersectionality
●Collaboration
●Community
●Voice
●Generosity
●Care
Adapted from Kathleen Fitzpatrick OpenEd plenary 2021 35

36. If we want to
solve the world’s
biggest problems
then we need to
make the
knowledge about
them open

37. “Open is a gift on offer. Like any gift, it is up to
you whether you think it is worthwhile to accept
it. We only ask that you consider” (Biswas-
Diener & Jhangiani, 2017:6)

38. References
Cox, G., Masuku, B. & Willmers, M. (2020) Open Textbooks and Social Justice: Open Educational Practices to Address Economic, Cultural and
Political Injustice at the University of Cape Town. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1 (2):pp. 1–10. Available at:
https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/31887
Cox, G., Masuku, B. & Willmers, M. (2022) Sustainable open textbook models for social justice. Front. Educ. 7:881998. doi:
10.3389/feduc.2022.881998
DOT4D. (2021). Open Textbooks in South African Higher Education: Action Brief. Cape Town: Digital Open Textbooks for Development. Available at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_BFNLHPRcPP1f94GyR9EiZ98HKKu54f1/view?usp=sharing
Fraser, N. (2005). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, 69–88. Retrieved from https://newleftreview.org/II/36/nancy-fraser-
reframing-justice-in-a-globalizing-world
Jhangiani R. & Biswas-Diener R. (eds.) (2017). Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. London:
Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc