Supporting innovation in educational technology by enabling

open educational practices

Michael Paskevicius

Reporting from: Centre for Educational Technology

University of Cape Town

Agenda

The case for open education in Southern Africa

Open education at the University of Cape Town

Unintended benefits, unforeseen consequences

Other interesting open initiatives in the South

Global Science Research Outputs (2001)

http://www.worldmapper.org 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).

“There’s been no significant break in relations of knowledge production between the colonial and post-colonial eras. African universities are essentially consumers of knowledge produced in developed countries.”

Blade Nzimande, Minister for Higher Education and Training UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education 2009

CC-BY Eve Gray: http://www.slideshare.net/evegray/open-access-week-2009-university-of-the-western-cape

What’s different about Africa now?

• 100x improvements in both international and national bandwidth

• TENET/SANREN bandwidth 10Gbps (coming soon)

• Enables new possibilities, especially for audio, video and rich media

• Africa coming online

CC- BY Steve Song http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/

Did You Know - Mobile Stats for Africa 2011, Compiled by Praekelt Foundation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kamlf-uAHU

Mobile revolution

The penetration of mobile phone networks in many low and middle-income countries surpasses other infrastructure such as paved roads and electricity, and dwarfs fixed Internet deployment.http://www.who.int/goe/publications/goe_mhealth_web.pdf

The penetration of mobile phone networks in many low and middle-income countries surpasses other infrastructure such as paved roads and electricity, and dwarfs fixed Internet deployment.http://www.who.int/goe/publications/goe_mhealth_web.pdf

CC-BY Eve Gray: http://www.slideshare.net/evegray/scholarly-publishing-in-africa-namibia

What can be done with this onslaught of bandwidth and access to knowledge?

University of Cape Town : from - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cape_Town

Informal Settlement : from - http://www.flickr.com/photos/54357435@N00/1093665713 Author: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_CA

Open access/education projects at UCT

http://www.capetowndeclaration.orghttp://www.capetowndeclaration.org

OER UCT Project

• Funded by Shuttleworth Foundation from March 2009 – February 2010, total value R800,000 ($97,000 CAD)

• Activities:– Survey existing teaching & learning resources with

potential to be OERs– Provide support to OER creators– Facilitate the publication of 5 exemplar OERs– Create an OER Directory for UCT– Document the OER UCT process as a case study

• Encourage and support the production and sharing of South African open educational resources

Strategy 1: Small part-time team

• Employ a part-time project manager & graduate assistants

• Use existing staff members of CET– Academic in CET – Project Director– Co-ordinator of the CET Learning Technologies -

technical manager – Student volunteers

Strategy 2: Resource-based OERIncludes:• entire courses• individual

resources– e-books– Manuals– Presentations– Podcasts– Lecture notes– Animations

Strategy 3: Referatory of OER

• Reduce duplication and maximise the use of existing infrastructure

• Directory allows– Lecturers to upload or remove resources– Lecturers to capture metadata– Search, browse and discover resources by

category or keywords

Strategy 4: Use OSS - Drupal

• Use Open Source Software + Drupal modules customised by CET team

• Specialist programming and theming done by consulting company

• Uses same authentication as other UCT sites

http://drupal.org

Strategy 5: Academic agency• Decentralised uploading

– Individuals academics upload and maintain their resources directly

• Pride of authorship– Quality assurance with the

individual not the system– Quality assurance part of broader

teaching and learning systems, not separate

• Minimal moderation– Copyright compliance only

Strategy 6: Metadata standard

Users add Dublin Core metadata which increases the discoverability of a resource

This particular resource is hosted in the LMS, but described and shared in OpenContent

Strategy 7: Project incorporated into existing portfolio

• To ensure the sustainability of the UCT OpenContent directory, the management of the OER initiative would become part of the portfolio of the Curriculum Development Officer in the Centre for Educational Technology (CET)

Strategy 8: Marketing

• Seminars & workshops• Blog – OER@UCT• Facebook / Twitter• Social events• Button on UCT homepage

Strategy 9: Innovation grants

• 9 small grants in 2011• £800 ($1,200 CAD) each• Health Science, Engineering,

Law, CHED, Science• To create and/or adapt OER • From entire curriculum to

small media intensive teaching and learning resources

Strategy 10: Open.UCT• Aims to make freely available scholarly resources

which can be shared, including research, teaching and other scholarly resources

• Engage the UCT community in open education and open scholarship issues in the broader sense

• Participate in global open education and open scholarship discussions from a developing country perspective

Growth of OER at UCT

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Resources addedmonthly

Growth of total content

Measuring influence: Alternative metrics

WHY GO OPEN? WHAT ARE THE POSSIBILITIES?

  by  ryancr 

Computer Literacy in the Community

IEEE UCT chapter use the openly licensed computer literacy guides to support training in a computer lab donated to a local high school

http://www.ebe.uct.ac.za/usr/ebe/staff/april2010.pdfhttp://www.ebe.uct.ac.za/usr/ebe/staff/april2010.pdf

Studying at University: A guide for first year students

• Used by Venda University and the University of the Western Cape with new students

• Stellenbosch University uses some of the illustrations• The guide has been accessed over 3800 times via the

directory and over 600 physical printed guides have been sold!

http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/Centre-for-Higher-Education-Development/Studying-at-University-A-guide-for-first-year-studentshttp://opencontent.uct.ac.za/Centre-for-Higher-Education-Development/Studying-at-University-A-guide-for-first-year-students

OpenContent becomes a Journal Article

• Materials published as OER on OpenContent

selected for publishing in the Journal of Occupational Therapy of Galicia, an open access journal for occupational therapists in the Spanish speaking world

http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/oer-uct/2010/12/06/sharing-knowledge-leads-to-opportunitieshttp://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/oer-uct/2010/12/06/sharing-knowledge-leads-to-opportunities

OTHER INTERESTING OPEN EDUCATION INITIATIVES IN SOUTH AFRICA

http://www.fundamaths.com/http://www.fundamaths.com/

http://projects.siyavula.com/http://projects.siyavula.com/

Collecting OER in Africa: OER Africa

http://www.oerafrica.org/http://www.oerafrica.org/

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License. To view a copy of this license,

visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/za/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San

Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Prepared by: Michael Paskevicius michael.paskevicus@gmail.com

OpenUCThttp://openuct.uct.ac.za/

OpenContent Directory: http://opencontent.uct.ac.za

Follow me: http://twitter.com/mpaskevi

Presentations: http://www.slideshare.net/mpaskevi