In this three-year grant, OER Africa focused attention on raising awareness about the benefits of OER, supported collaborative development, adaptation and implementation processes within faculties, courses and programmes, and supported development and elaboration of OER policy frameworks at institutional, national, regional and continental levels.
Our work with networks expanded during the period of this grant to include:
- African Council for Distance Education (ACDE)
- Agriculture Education Network – this included collaborating with the Agshare planning and pilot project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. OER sensitisation took place at Makerere in Uganda, USIU and Moi in Kenya and Haramaya in Ethiopia. Agshare II was a collaboration with three institutions, Haramaya and Mekelle Universities in Ethiopia and Makerere University in Uganda to create and openly share different types of OER that strengthen MSc agriculture faculty. RUFORUM came on board as a new partner in this phase
- African OER Teacher Education Network which included working with the Open University (UK) TESSA Initiative.
- Health OER Network – Work here was expanded during this period through a separate grant from the Hewlett Foundation. A consultative forum with partners and representatives from other African countries was held in 2009.
The network spaces were strengthened with both internally developed resources and external resources, such as:
- Saide Education Studies
- Agshare course materials
- Course design and development guide
- Count materials
- Health Information Building Blocks
Research was conducted and documented in the form of case studies, which included:
- Bunda College of Agriculture, University of Malawi
- Kamuzu College of Nursing
- Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA)
- KNUST (Health OER Project)
- University of Ghana (Health OER Project)
- UCT (Health OER Project)
- Exploring the Business Case for OER.
OER Awareness Raising, Sensitisation and Support, which included running workshops, building up our repository to support and strengthen theoretical understanding of OER, was provided to:
We developed and supported development of the following resources and toolkits:
Communities of practice were established and provided space on the OER Africa website to collaborate in the development of course materials and also to provide a home for their OERs.
We also prioritized research activities during this period to understand current OER practice in Africa, user needs and contextual factors. The following were the research outputs: