Wednesday, 3rd February 2021
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What is a Community of Practice?
Are you looking to interact with people who are interested in Open Education Resources (OER)? Do you have ideas that you want to share with a wider audience and learn more about OER? A Community of Practice (CoP) might be the right place for you.
The term ‘Community of Practice’ was created by Etienne Wenger, who offers a social theory of learning – a school of thought that proposes that humans can acquire new ideas and behaviours by observing others. The term has been used in various ways, and usually refers to informal networks that support people to develop shared meaning and engage in knowledge building.[1] A CoP is a group of individuals who share a domain of interest, which they use as a basis for interaction. Members of a CoP for OER might share resources, experiences, problems and solutions, tools, and methodologies. This results in members gaining knowledge from one another and, by extension, contributes to the development of knowledge within the domain of OER and the field of Open Educational Practices (OEPs) more broadly.[2]
A CoP is a great way to conduct advocacy and gain momentum for OER at your institution, within your organisation, or in your social circle. Some CoPs may involve projects like developing an OER strategy or distributing OER grants at an institution, while others may simply be aimed at knowledge sharing.
OER Africa published a report on CoPs, which is accessible here. Parts of this article are based on the report.
According to the report, CoPs have several defining characteristics, as illustrated in the graphic below.
Source: Hoosen, S. (2009). Communities of Practice: A research paper prepared by OER Africa
Important to note is that CoPs can take different forms and they vary across different dimensions; for example, they can be small and tight knit or large and loosely connected. The concept of virtual CoPs has gained increasing popularity as technology and the Internet open opportunities for faster and alternative means of communication with people who are geographically far away from each other. They have also become a very practical means of interacting with people who are interested in a particular subject field since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions it has created on face-to-face interaction and travel.
You can access more resources on CoPs here.
How do I set up a CoP for OER?
The success of a CoP ultimately depends on preparation and involves consideration of a number of key aspects.
- Identify the scope and focus of the CoP for OER: Answer the following questions such as ‘What is the value proposition of the CoP?’ and ‘What will its scope be?’
- Build a case for action: Consider the purpose of the CoP and outline key deliverables over the next one to two years, as well as how the CoP will contribute to the OER movement. Think about how the CoP will satisfy members’ expectations.
- Identify a CoP facilitator: Since relationships are central to one’s sense of community, a facilitator is central to creating and maintaining a robust CoP. The facilitator should have sufficient time available to dedicate to the CoP and should be motivated, creative, and knowledgeable about OER. The facilitator will be responsible for organising meetings, maintaining and distributing knowledge resources, and monitoring the effectiveness of the CoP.
- Identify potential members and criteria for membership: Consider who the best people are to be part of the CoP. It might be useful to think about how to introduce diversity into the group through broad membership, so that there are wide-ranging perspectives. Depending on the scope of the CoP, you might consider approaching anyone from OER practitioners and advocates to librarians and institutional management.
- Highlight the benefits of joining the CoP to potential members: Benefits include faster solutions, reducing duplication of efforts, and enabling people to develop and share new ideas or strategies around OER promotion.
- Identify potential knowledge to share: Get community members to identify knowledge that would be useful to share.
- Decide on an initial technology platform: The platform/s should enable the group to communicate effectively and store resources. They should be easily accessible to all members.
- Consider how the CoP will be governed: Establish clear rules for decision-making and accountability, as well as what resources are available, what the key milestones or deadlines are, and who the stakeholders are, to name a few.
Once you have done the background preparation, you can start planning the official launch of your CoP. At the launch, it is good practice to develop a community charter. Thereafter, the CoP should determine the roles and responsibilities of community members, initiate events and spaces (such as meetings or OER advocacy activities), build a core group to drive the CoP, and find and share knowledge. Once you have passed the initial phase, here are some tips on ensuring that your CoP is effective and sustainable.
How do I find people who are interested in OER?
Struggling to find people who are interested in your preferred subject area? Here are some options for you to consider:
- Reach out to your network: It can be surprising how you might share a common interest in OER with people in your network – even if you haven’t discussed it with them before. They might even be able to put you in contact with someone they know who is interested in OER or looking to gain knowledge.
- Search on LinkedIn: One of the benefits of LinkedIn is that you can search for keywords and come across thought leaders, organisations, different stakeholders, or people with a general interest in OER. You can strike up a conversation by sending a message on LinkedIn.
- Do your research: Use a search engine to look for resources and websites with information about OER. Find out who is producing this knowledge and approach them to gauge their interest in being a CoP member.
Access the links below to see some CoPs for OER, and OEPs more broadly, in action:
- Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
- OER Commons: Open Education Community of Practice
- BC Open Educational Technology Collaborative
- Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
Ultimately, developing a CoP for OER is a wonderful way of learning, sharing knowledge, and advocating for OER use. As long as you maintain a clear sense of the scope of your CoP and ensure that all of the CoP’s activities contribute to its case for action, it can make a valuable contribution to the OER movement.
[1] Hoosen, S. (2009). Communities of Practice: A research paper prepared by OER Africa. Retrieved from https://www.oerafrica.org/system/files/7779/cop1-web_0.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=7779
[2] Gannon-Leary, P. and Fontainha, E. (2007). Communities of Practice and virtual learning communities: benefits, barriers and success factors. eLearning Papers. Retrieved from https://www.oerafrica.org/system/files/7680/communities-practice-and-virtual-learning-communities_0.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=7680
For more articles in this series, click on the links below.
- Do you want to communicate your research more widely? (19 January 2021)
- How can you get involved in the Open COVID Pledge for Education? (9 December 2020)
- How can governments and institutions operationalize the OER Recommendation? (19 November 2020)
- How can you use MOOCs in your teaching? (21 October 2020)
- Online assessment: How do we know if students are learning? (18 September 2020)
- UNESCO’s OER Recommendation Dynamic Coalition Consultations: The way forward (26 August 2020)
- The Open COVID Pledge for Education (12 August 2020)
- How can OpenCourseWare help you to improve your courses? (16 July 2020)
- Evaluating Open Content (2 July 2020)
- Adapting Open Content (25 June 2020)
- Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open data (18 June 2020)
- Sharing Africa’s knowledge through openly licensed publishing (11 June 2020)
- Podcast: OER and their Relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic (5 June 2020)
- Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open African research repositories (29 May 2020)
- Emergency Remote Teaching Webinar Series – All resources available (18 May 2020)
- OER Repositories in Africa (8 May 2020)
- How to Find Open Content (30 April 2020)
- Online (and offline) reading resources for children (23 April 2020)
- Showcasing OER Platforms: OER Africa (15 April 2020)
What's New
Funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Saide OER Africa embarks on an impactful project to support the effective development and use of Open Education Resources in higher education systems in selected sub-Saharan African countries. Ashton Maherry, reports on recent travels to Beira, Mozambique, to establish a strategic partnership with UnISCED.
Figure 1: Representatives from OER Africa and UnISCED
As part of Saide’s OER Africa initiative, Ashton Maherry (Saide) and Neil Butcher (Neil Butcher & Associates) recently visited UnISCED to establish a partnership to promote the use of Open Education Resources (OER) at UnISCED. UnISCED (translated as Open University Institute of Sciences and Distance Education) is a Mozambican private higher education institution dedicated exclusively to open and distance education and was established in 2014.
The current William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grant in support of OER Africa, continues its focus of supporting effective development and use of OER in higher education systems in African universities. The project has four outcomes:
1. Development of comprehensive Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Frameworks for academics, senior management and academic librarians.
2. Development of an online collection of Continuous Professional Development Open Education Resources in higher education
3. Collaboration with at least four African universities
4. Establishment of a Continuous Professional Development network
The visit to UnISCED forms part of a planned collaboration with at least four Universities including, Botswana Open University, the University of Namibia and UnISCED and hopefully one other, still to be determined.
Several areas of the strategic partnership were identified during the UnISCED visit, these include the development, implementation and evaluation of policies that support the use of OERs, capacity building of senior management, academics and academic librarians to use OERs to strengthen teaching and learning, the identification of possible free or commercial online resources that can help academics with their teaching and learning materials, such as simulators and virtual labs, and the exciting challenge of translating predominantly English resources to Portuguese. In addition, the possibility of UnISCED becoming a member of the African Association of Librarians (AfLIA) was explored and will be taken forward in the next three months.
UnISCED and Saide are in the process of finalising the Memorandum of Understanding. OER Africa and UnISCED are planning a survey for UnISCED staff to identify focus areas for professional development in relation to OER. A second visit to UnISCED is planned in the next few months to finalise the CPD framework, conduct an awareness-raising session on open licensing to Senior Management and facilitate a training session on how to find, use and adapt OER for academics.
A note on OER Africa's CPD frameworks
This work builds on a series of CPD frameworks we are developing at OER Africa in collaboration with our partners. A CPD framework is a planning guide that supports the career development of higher education professionals. In the case of academics, a framework aims to empower and encourage staff, enhance and develop their pedagogical skills, assist them to reflect, and contribute to quality assurance of the student learning experience (adapted from National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education [2016]).
We have used a wheel structure (Figure 1), with wedges showing the professional development domains and levels of progress (foundation, established, and advanced) aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy (Armstrong, 2020). Each domain is being elaborated with indicators of attainment to align with levels of progress, as well as available openly-licensed materials that can support individual higher education professionals and institutional structures with the CPD. When they are completed, we hope that institutions will (with the support of OER Africa) customise the domains for themselves, develop CPD policies, assess their staff competencies, and provide training to capacitate their staff.
Figure 2: Framework for academics showing possible domains to be supported.
Related articles
In conjunction with OER Africa, AfLIA is hosting a panel discussion on the role of Artificial Intelligence and African libraries on 24 April 2023. This webinar is the second in a series of activities that will help build understanding, adaptable knowledge and skills.
Register now
AfLIA has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with OER Africa of Saide to build a sturdy CPD framework that will project African librarians into a new era as change agents and leaders in driving open education, open access and open licensing as critical components for driving quality education and creativity in the continent.
In conjunction with OER Africa, AfLIA is hosting a panel discussion on the role of Artificial Intelligence and African libraries. This webinar is the second in a series of activities that will help build understanding, adaptable knowledge and skills. The first 100 participants can register and join the panel discussion on Zoom. Additional participants will be able to follow it live on YouTube.
Date: Monday, 24th April, 2023
Time: 9.30am UTC | 10.30am WAT | 11.30am CAT | 12.30pm EAT
Registration
This is a free webinar. After completing the registration form, you will receive notification via email with details of how to join the webinar.
Carefully read the section on Technical Requirements to help you prepare adequately for this webinar.
Resource persons
Just as the introduction of personal computers revolutionized access to computing power for everyone, AI technology such as ChatGPT, has made advanced language models widely accessible to a broader audience. The conversation about the implications of such AI has been re-ignited since the launch of ChatGPT. Indeed, AI powered technologies, when embraced, can play a vital role by improving access to information and refining the quality of services provided to patrons. As with every other technology, AI may have some undesirable implications on library education, research and service delivery. The global conversation is an interesting mix of divergent views on AI but not so much has been discussed in the area of its impact on Librarianship, especially within the African context. Stanley will briefly highlight general issues of awareness, perception, adoption and the implications of AI on African library education, research and service delivery.
Stanley Boakye-Achampong is the AfLIA Research Coordinator
English is the dominant language in most OER repositories. The same is true for open access journal literature; many more scientific journals are published in English rather than in other languages. The two noteworthy exceptions are African Storybook (ASb) and StoryWeaver that focus on African languages and Southern Asian respectively.
It has been demonstrated that if children are to be successful in learning to read with comprehension, they should start out in their mother tongue. Adults, too, would benefit by reading content in their own languages. This is particularly true of scientific terms and concepts. The use of language, therefore, has great significance when considering how to make education truly inclusive and equitable—one of the goals of the UNESCO OER Recommendation.
AI can assist authors and readers to read research in their own languages. Liz will discuss efforts to make science inclusive and equitable in African languages, with a focus on research literature and the role of AI in translation.
Liz Levey is an independent consultant and expert in the field of openness and languages
Drs. Nkem Osuigwe and Tony Lelliott will facilitate the discussion.
Technical Requirements
Upon registration, reminders will be sent to all registrants periodically. This webinar will be hosted on the Zoom Conferencing Platform. Participants, who do not have Zoom on their mobile devices and or computers, need to download, install and create an account on Zoom ahead of time. Webinar attendees are encouraged to join early, preferably 15 minutes before the start of the webinar, as one may need time launch the application. The speaker will use a webcam to connect with attendees. Audio and video for the session will be streamed over computer speakers. Attendees are therefore encouraged to connect with a headset or earpiece for maximum utility. Please note that this webinar does not involve a certificate of participation.
The webinar will also be live-streamed on YouTube.
There have been several recent calls for Continuous Professional Development (CPD) to take a more prominent role at the higher education level. OER Africa is in the process of developing three CPD frameworks to structure capacity building for academics, academic librarians, and senior management in higher education institutions.
Continuous professional development (CPD) frameworks for professionals in Higher Education
The need for CPD in higher education
CPD is ‘professional learning that results in changes to [academics’] knowledge and practices, and improvements in student learning outcomes’ (after Darling-Hammond et al. 2017). There have been several recent calls for CPD to take a more prominent role at higher education (HE) level (e.g. Mihai, 2021; Bruzga, 2022), that highlight the following:
- Professional development planning should be strategic: it should become a fundamental part of the academics’ annual activities, and not a mere “extracurricular” undertaking for a few interested staff.
- Institutions should consider developing a system of incentives and rewards that encourages staff to focus on their teaching.
- Institutions that already offer CPD should evaluate their offerings to determine whether they are the right fit for the current needs of the institution.
- Where feasible, faculties and schools should encourage communities of practice so that professionals can share their experiences, and support and empower each other
Barriers to participation in CPD
Despite the needs, there is evidence that higher education professionals rarely participate in CPD due to barriers such as:
- A reluctance to renounce teaching practices with which they are familiar. Similarly, innovative teaching practices are not normally a requirement for appointment, or for career progression.
- The absence of inducements for self-development in higher education institutions (HEIs).
- A lack of time.
- HEIs’ lack of pedagogical expertise and institutional capacity to develop effective CPD schemes.
Since the need for CPD is great, and many institutions either lack the capacity to provide it or carry it out in an ad hoc manner, OER Africa is in the process of developing three CPD frameworks to structure capacity building for academics, academic librarians, and senior management in HEIs.
CPD frameworks
A CPD framework is a planning guide that supports the career development of higher education professionals. In the case of academics, a framework aims to empower and encourage staff, enhance and develop their pedagogical skills, assist them to reflect, and contribute to quality assurance of the student learning experience (adapted from National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education [2016]).
The CPD frameworks we are developing at OER Africa, in collaboration with our partners such as the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), are adapted from the British Council’s CPD framework for teacher educators. We have used a wheel structure (Figure 1), with wedges showing the professional development domains and levels of progress (foundation, established, and advanced) aligned with Bloom’s Taxonomy (Armstrong, 2020). Each domain is being elaborated with indicators of attainment to align with levels of progress, as well as available openly-licensed materials that can support individual HE professionals and institutional structures with the CPD. When they are completed, we hope that institutions will (with the support of OER Africa) customise the domains for themselves, develop CPD policies, assess their staff competencies, and provide training to capacitate their staff.
Figure 1: Framework for academics showing possible domains to be supported.
The initiative is in its early stages. OER Africa is currently collaborating with a few African universities to tailor the framework to their own needs, and discuss policy development and implementation. Concurrently, we are identifying and evaluating relevant CPD OER available worldwide, with a view to making them available in a repository to support institutions that would like to develop their staff. Once completed, a full set of frameworks will be made available on the OER Africa website, together with associated OER to allow institutions to modify them to suit their own contexts. We welcome comment on the initiative as it develops; you can email us on the form available at https://www.oerafrica.org/contact.
Related research report: Continuous Professional Development strategies in Higher Education Institutions
The following publications were drawn on to create this blog post:
British Council. (nd). Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Framework for teacher educators https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/4204_BritishCouncil_CPD_Teacher_Educators_FINAL_040222.pdf.
Bruzga, L. (2022). Why Professional Development in Higher Ed Requires Regular Revisions. EdTech Focus on Higher Education. https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2022/03/why-professional-development-higher-ed-requires-regular-revisions
Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., Gardner, M. (2017). Effective Teacher Professional Development. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.
Inamorato dos Santos, A., Gaušas, S., Mackevičiūtė, R., Jotautytė, A., Martinaitis, Ž. (2019). Innovating Professional Development in Higher Education: An analysis of practices, EUR 29676 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, ISBN 978-92- 76-00580-3, doi:10.2760/26224, JRC115622.
Mihai, A. (2021). This pandemic must bring faculty development to the fore. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/pandemic-must-bring-faculty-development-fore
National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2016). National Professional Development Framework for all staff who teach in Higher Education. Dublin. https://hub.teachingandlearning.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/NF-2016-National-Professional-Development-Framework-for-all-Staff-Who-Teach-in-Higher-Education.pdf.
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