Book Chapters

In the last decade, a number of OER initiatives in African higher education have sought to address challenges related to the access, supply and contextualisation of educational materials. However, limited information is available on the effectiveness of such initiatives. To gain deeper insight into this, OER Africa conducted research between September 2019 and February 2022. The project analysed the effectiveness of eleven key African OER initiatives in higher education and their influence on developing and supporting effective OER practices. The research team used a mixed-methods approach which included a short survey, desktop research and in-depth online interviews with initiative representatives to develop eleven case studies (one for each initiative). They also developed an analytical summary report which drew key findings across the case studies together. Three significant themes emerged from the research, which are explored in this chapter. First, the research highlighted the impact that OER localisation had on improving the number of contextually relevant educational materials. Second, it identified successes and challenges of OER advocacy. Third, it contributed insights about sustainability efforts for the initiatives, including funding, inter-institutional support, and champions to advocate for OER. This chapter explores these themes using the case studies and the accompanying report findings.

Governments across the world are increasing the openness and transparency of their services, a move also taking place in the education sector in some countries, signifying commitment to openness and ensuring that adequate attention and funding is paid to open educational resources (OER). This chapter assesses the extent to which policies are being developed and/or modified to support effective use of open educational resources. However, despite the growth of OER at many institutions, surprisingly few have developed and implemented formal OER policies. Those with policies have most commonly established them in a context of having implemented OER projects, thereafter recognising the need for policy to inform initiatives or to institutionalise OER formally. Others have developed OER policies as they began exploring the use of OER. Evidence suggests the vital role of leadership support and champions in encouraging and driving OER policies.

Several institutions have developed practices or procedures that support OER and which contribute towards institutionalising OER, even though there may not be a formal policy. A review of available policies reveals that they do not typically cover all aspects related to OER creation and adaptation, with most institutions focusing primarily on managing intellectual property rights and releasing materials using a Creative Commons license. In some instances, policy has been created, but with little evidence of consistency between policy and practice, highlighting that policy fulfils a limited function and that issues such as sustainability and faculty buy-in and involvement are of equal importance. This chapter concludes with recommendations to accelerate the development and adoption of open licensing frameworks for governments, institutions and faculty.

This chapter focuses on online teaching but is relevant for all modes of instruction. Topics covered include microlearning and microcontent, text content, video content, and locating OER, along with five references. It is a valuable resource for academics to learn about ‘chunking’ content into manageable amounts, developing and presenting text, using, and hosting video content, and effectively presenting content in their courses.

Ideas for CPD Interventions
Useful for CPD where the focus is on selecting content for use in a course.

The resource champions using a teaching methodology with ‘hands-on activities’ to encourage higher order thinking skills to supplement lectures.

Ideas for CPD Interventions
This Pressbooks chapter is useful when compiling CPD that attempts to encourage lecturers to embrace varied teaching methodologies over and above the lecture. The strategy is to incorporate into a series of lectures opportunities for students to engage with the content in an active fashion. This method could be offered as part of a suggested list of things to try out in class shared among the academic staff, followed by an opportunity to discuss the effectiveness of these hands-on activities.

A good introduction to understand what role technology must play in supporting the common modes of delivery: asynchronous, synchronous, in person with facilitator, remote learning, blended, and hybrid. Once the modes of delivery are understood then the selection of technology is easier.

Ideas for CPD Interventions
The CPD intervention might be to develop a tool, and criteria, to determine if student or staff access to technology is sufficient to support a specific mode at an institution.

This is a book chapter with practical examples of how to curate digital resources. It would lead librarians into understanding the difference between collecting and curating digital resources.

The ebook provides background knowledge on institutional repositories – the content, access points and relevant stakeholders for the successful operations of IRs. 

Digital content refers to any type of material that exists in digital format, whether the material is born-digital or converted using scanning and digitization. Digital content has increased in recent years because of modern and innovative technologies, such as social media, enterprise applications, digital publishing, smart cities applications, Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and mobiles devices, such as smartphones with enhanced digital capture capabilities. The shift toward open access makes it easier and more affordable for libraries to provide access to curated digital collections. The role and nature of the librarian and information professional's job are also changing. Some existing jobs are being reinvented or expanded, and many new jobs are being created.

This resource provides historical and contextual information as well as trends and tools for management of digital content. 

The resource lists risks that data may face, and how policies, procedures, and standards can be put in place for effective management and use of data. 

This toolkit is aimed at higher education stakeholders who are working with Open Educational Resources (OER). It explains the notion of copyright and describes the different licensing options available to the author/creator of a work. Whether you are wanting to license your own work, or are tasked with clearing copyrighted documents, you will find comprehensive information about the basic concepts in copyright and licensing, the types of open licences that exist, and tools and techniques to provide support.

The toolkit has the following sections, each section comprises sub-sections that provide more detail on the focus issue.

1. Basic definitions and concepts.
2. Creative Commons licences.
3. Applying a licence to your work.
4. Copyright clearance.

The AgShare Toolkit provides resources that can be used and referred to by trainers, faculty, staff, and graduate students to assure that the outputs developed for research and farm communities will follow best practices.

The Guide to Blended Learning is an introduction using technology and distance education teaching strategies with traditional, face-to-face classroom activities. This Guide has been designed to assist teachers adopt blended learning strategies through a step-by-step approach taking constructivist and design-based approach and reflecting on decisions taken to provide authentic learning experience in their own contexts. It provides a general discussion of types of blended learning in reference to the level of education, the needs of the students, and the subject being taught. This discussion and associated activities also review pedagogy, materials, and technology usage. Divided into eight chapters, each of these provide an overview video that triggers learning events for the teachers to focus and work on implementing blending learning.

The guidelines describe the whole process for designing and implementing OER policy in seven chapters, each representing a clear phase in the whole process. The chapters introduce the purpose of the phase and provide background information and references with practical examples for illustration. At the end of each chapter, specific tasks are set for the policy-maker, which will help with formulating of the final OER policy.

The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project was a four-year (2013–2017), large-scale networked project which set out to contribute a Global South research perspective on how open educational resources can help to improve access, enhance quality and reduce the cost of education in the Global South. The project engaged a total of 103 researchers in 18 sub-projects across 21 countries from South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, coordinated by Network Hub teams at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Wawasan Open University.

This chapter forms part of a project activity toolkit, which is comprised of five documents outlining activities associated with each of the ROER4D UCT Network Hub pillars of project management activity: networking, evaluation, communications, research capacity building, and curation and dissemination. It is hoped that these chapters will be of practical use to other projects attempting to integrate any of these functions in their operational strategy.

The Publishing Cooperative Advisory Group has revised its Publishing Toolkit, expanding the content into two new openly licensed toolkits – the OER Publishing Project Toolkit and the OER Publishing Program Toolkit.

The OER Publishing Project Toolkit is designed to assist librarians and project facilitators who support academic (faculty) authors who are creating and publishing OER projects. It offers a variety of resources to use at the project level such as templates, style guides, tutorials, checklists, author guidelines, and ready-to-use forms.

The OER Publishing Program Toolkit is designed for librarians and staff who manage OER publishing programs. This second toolkit guides project managers on how to structure, implement, and assess open textbook publishing programs.

This resource is the Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) site. Librarians can study it to see how to capture news, comments and track progress on open access and research. 

Ideas for CPD interventions

The site runs on free software which can be adapted. Also, libraries can decide to teach students, lecturers and researchers how to upload the information about their open access initiatives to the site.

This resource provides tools and standards for developing and integrating metadata as well as maps metadata structures used by heritage institutions. This material could be used by librarians for learning about metadata. They could also use it a reading in a library guide on Metadata.