Research Reports

In our efforts to support African universities to understand and harness the concept of open educational resources (OER), OER Africa has identified several practical constraints to achieving the widely anticipated potential for OER to contribute to achieving higher degrees of equity across higher education in Africa. Effective harnessing of OER practices depends heavily on the educational skills of participating academics. Our work has suggested to us, anecdotally at least, that generally these skills are at much lower levels than we had assumed, regardless of the subject matter expertise of academics.

This report presents the findings of several interrelated activities that explore the relationship between educationally effective use of OER and continuous professional development (CPD) of African academics. It also examines academic CPD needs, and outlines the processes and outcomes of efforts to  engage with universities to develop and test a range of professional development activities and approaches that might respond to these needs.

Following the adoption of the OER Recommendation1 in November 2019, UNESCO launched the OER Dynamic Coalition in March 2020. The launch meeting defined a Roadmap for the activities of the Dynamic Coalition. The Coalition aims to reinforce international and regional cooperation among all stakeholders in the first four areas of the UNESCO OER Recommendation and support governments in implementing the OER Recommendation. Building on the activities to date, the online consultation for the OER Dynamic Coalition Working Groups was held on 22, 23 and 24 July 2020 on Zoom. This meeting was organized by the Communication and Information Sector, UNESCO in the framework of the OER Dynamic Coalition. This online consultation brought together some 70 stakeholders from governments, institutions, Inter‐governmental Organizations, Non‐government Organizations and the private sector from all UNESCO world regions.

This document represents a first attempt at collating the information available on the Internet to understand the term 'communities of practice'. It is not comprehensive, but can help to understand the key features of communities of practice to inform the development of the OER platform.

This analysis aims to better inform this important aspect of OER Africa's work. With this in mind, this paper identifies the areas (domains) that OER Africa might initially target, outlines the context and criteria under which they might be considered for inclusion and makes recommendations regarding how OER Africa might proceed to incorporate them into its activities.

A reflective report on the Saide ACEMaths project, which piloted a collaborative approach to the sourcing, adaptation and publication as Open Educational Resources (OERs) of existing suitable materials for use in a variety of South African teacher education programmes.

Many of the restrictions on access to knowledge in Africa, but particularly in the Southern Africa Region, revolve around restrictive copyright practices and regulations, a lack of access to Internet-based technologies, out-dated paradigms for knowledge collection and dissemination, and the lack of creative and effective government supported enabling environments within higher education to match the vision of African leaders for knowledge and innovation in Africa in the 21st century. The report offers a series of recommendations to address these challenges, both at a policy level and with regard to research and dissemination (e.g. an ‘open knowledge platform’ for the region). These are of sufficient magnitude that a paradigm shift is required in thinking, knowledge generation and dissemination. Sufficient critical and concerted action will be necessary in order to produce a series of ‘break throughs’. Additional authors: Mark Burke, Eve Gray, Andrew Rens

This study commences with a brief overview of the historical context in which current higher education systems in Sub-Saharan Africa have evolved. Without an understanding and appreciation of how higher education (HE ) evolved on the continent it may be all too easy to equate the complex challenges faced by HE institutions today with a lack of resources, motivation or capacity on the part of those who have worked for several decades to address these challenges. In other words, there are sound historical reasons that help to explain the current crisis within the HE sector and these are well worth exploring.

Higher Education Institutions in Africa increasingly find themselves trapped in an ineluctable impasse: To remain relevant they must satisfy the diverse and often contradictory demands of various stakeholders while doing so with severe limitations to their budgets and other resources

These findings are relevant not only to the study countries but also to the international copyright community and, most specifically, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), whose Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) is involved in progressive development of copyright norms, policies and practices. ACA2K research is especially relevant to discussions on limitations and exceptions.

This paper draws on a literature review undertaken by the ACU, as part of a study commissioned by Arcadia (www.arcadiafund.org.uk) on the obstacles to accessing and using digital scholarly information in African universities. It outlines the principal issues which have been identified through existing programmes, studies and reviews, and summarises existing initiatives in this area. In doing so, it highlights a number of areas to be explored in greater depth during the subsequent phases of the project.

Supporting Collaboration and Harnessing of OER Within the Policy Framework of KNUST: Report Prepared by OER Africa on Behalf of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). As part of a broader process of stimulating collaboration amongst distance education providers taking place under the auspices of the African Council on Distance Education’s Technical Committee on Collaboration, OER Africa and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) signed a Memorandum of Understanding that has established a framework for a joint programme of action. Accordingly, OER Africa is providing support to KNUST in review of its current policies to assess the extent to which they facilitate collaboration and alternative, open licences for its educational materials.

The review was to be based on a study of relevant documents, interviews with academic staff involved in institutional policy making and OER production, interviews with students who had experienced OERs (in cases where this was possible). The evaluation approach was not intended to be judgemental, but rather to explore experiences (on progress, achievements and blockages) thus far. Respondents were to be invited to look back in a way that provided experiences as a basis for identifying issues relevant to further project development. Broad approval of the Evaluation Brief was received together with valuable guidance in respect of the conduct of the review, particularly in relation to institution-specific circumstances.

Although there are over a quarter of a million open courses published by an increasing number of universities, it remains unclear whether Open Education Resources (OER) is scalable and productively sustainable. The challenge is compounded when OER is examined in the light of its potential to allow both educators and learners in developing countries to contribute geographically bound learning resources in the context of varied infrastructural, technological and skill constraints. Between October and December 2009, 52 participants involved in various roles related to Health OER from five universities (one in the USA, two in Ghana and two in South Africa) were interviewed. The aim of the study was to investigate sustainability of OER based on possible cross-institutional collaboration as well as social and technical challenges in creating and sharing OER materials. The analytical framework was adopted from prior research in related areas: distributed scientific collaboration; cyber infrastructure; open source development; and Wikipedia. We adopted a qualitative approach for data collection, which included semi structured interviews and document analysis. The findings were analyzed and reported with many direct quotations included. The outcome of the data analysis is a model for productive, scalable, and sustainable OER based on cross-institutional collaboration. The report concludes with practical recommendations on how to the model can be operationalized.

The emergence of the Internet and the digital world has changed the way people access, produce and share information and knowledge. Yet people in Africa face challenges in accessing scholarly publications, journals and learning materials in general. At the heart of these challenges, and solutions to them, is copyright, the branch of intellectual property rights that covers written and related works.

This book gives the reader an understanding of the legal and practical constraints posed by copyright for access to learning materials in Africa, and identifies the relevant lessons, best policies and best practices that would broaden and deepen this access.

The book reflects and showcases the outputs and findings of the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) research project, LINK Centre, University of the Witwatersrand, launched in late 2007 as a network of researchers committed to probing the relationship between copyright and learning materials access in eight African countries: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.

As part of the Hewlett Foundation grant for the African Health OER Network, Professor Ken Harley (University of KwaZulu-Natal) conducts an annual external evaluation of the project. For his 2009 evaluation, Prof Harley interviewed participants at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), University of Ghana (UG), University of Cape Town (UCT), University of the Western Cape (UWC), the South African Institute of Distance Education (Saide) and the University of Michigan (U-M). In 2010, he conducted follow-up interviews with the same institutions. The 2010 evaluation was aimed at exploring institutional experiences, to establish how the project was being consolidated, and to start assessing issues of sustainability. Based on document analysis and institutional interviews, broadly, the evaluation concludes that:

• The African Health OER Network has supported institutions to develop OER based on institutional needs and choices. This in itself is a signifier of sustainability.

• Because of the modelling of OER production along institutional needs and choices, institutions have produced OER that are consistent with their “ethos, contextual realities, strategies and resources.” In other words, what is being produced will be utilised in the institution and is not designed for ‘show and tell’ to meet funder requirements.

• The development of OER has encouraged institutions to reconsider their policies on OER and also how they can support OER within their own means.