Since inception in 2008, OER Africa has sought to respond to the challenges faced by educators in Africa’s universities by working with them to collaboratively develop and implement open educational resource (OER) processes to redress specific teaching and learning insufficiencies. These processes have been tailor-made to fit the realities of the contexts within which they are to be applied, including inadequate bandwidth, a shortage of skills to develop and adapt relevant and appropriate teaching and learning materials, insufficient funding and over-stretched human resources. Strategies implemented to this end have included OER sensitization and advocacy, proof of OER concept pilot projects, policy work, materials development and adaptation, course design, and action research.

Initially, OER Africa adopted an expansive partnership strategy to advance this agenda. However, as its focus for its current work supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, OER Africa identified a need to deepen the knowledge base required to take OER in African universities to the next level – that is, the mainstreaming of engagement with OER to improve pedagogical practice. It decided to do this by supporting a small selection of universities which are committed to transforming teaching and learning practices, in the context of the information society, through Action Research and Critical Practice, to build evidence that OER practices can both lead to and support transformation, and can be successfully mainstreamed and institutionalized.

Thus, over a three year period, from 2014 to 2017, OER Africa is working with four universities: the African Nazarene University (ANU), the Open University of Tanzania (OUT), the University of the Free State (UFS), and the University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Veterinary Science (known as Onderstepoort). We are supporting these institutions to implement pedagogical changes using OER: our objective is to identify key supporting and inhibiting factors to sustaining such changes. Our approach is informed by an understanding that supporting significant institutional change requires sustained engagement and support over an extended period and that, while some critical success factors will be generic, others will be institutionally specific. Click her to download Lessons Emerging.

The following table is a summary taken from the formative and illuminative mid-term evaluation of this grant, conducted by Prof Ken Harley in May / June 2016. It is Table 2. Diversity across HEIs and the two regions: East Africa and South Africa in his report and can be found on p. 7 of the same report (available separately).