Tina Wilson

An Empirical Investigation of the Emergent Issues around OER Adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the past few years, Africa has joined the rest of the world as an active participant in the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement with a number of home-grown and externally driven initiatives. These have the potential to make an immense contribution to teaching and learning in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, certain barriers prevent full participation. This paper reports on qualitative research that sought to investigate SSAs readiness to adopt OERs. This study involves three case studies based in higher education institutions involved in OER projects and located in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. Contrary to the popular belief, findings indicate that low technological levels in Africa do not necessarily impede the adoption of such educational technologies; the real challenges facing the readiness to adopt OERs appear to be related to socio-economic, cultural, institutional and national issues. This paper argues for a complete mind shift in how people perceive OERs. It also proposes raising awareness of OERs at all levels, involving institutions and government, versioning OERs for the African context and conducting more research on OER adoption.

Using new tools to support creative community engagement with open educational resources

The availability of community building tools and open educational resources (OER) affords the creation of new and innovative learning spaces. However in much of the work on OER the focus has been on providing content, rather than on how tools can be used in conjunction with available content to create a shared space that could improve the impact of such resources. A series of studies taking a subject point of view looked at the prospects for collaborative and cooperative working around OER from the perspectives of teachers and technical experts, considering in particular whether they would become involved in open environments. The studies discussed give an insight into how academics view social tools and techniques and whether they would use open arenas for formal and informal learning. The topic of OER and associated facilitative tools is important and this paper looks beyond content production issues to contribute to the debate on how collaborative and cooperative working can be established around OER.