Re: Summary of the ACDE Virtual Forum on OER and Sustainable Development of Higher Education in Africa
Olugbemiro JEGEDE
Dear Participants,I did promise to send a full summary of the Virtual Forum. Here it is and hope you would find it comprehensive and useful.
_______________
As a fore-runner to the 2nd ACDE Conference and General Assembly to be held in Lagos at the National Open University of Nigeria from 8th to 11th July 2008 a Virtual Forum was held from the 2nd to 30 June 2008. The Virtual Forum concentrated on emerging ideas on Open Educational Resources (OER); an issue which bears tremendous significance to open and distance learning (ODL) in the developing world, especially Africa. The main theme of the forum was OERs and sustainable development of Higher Education in Africa.
The discussion held under four sub-themes namely:
- Capacity building and OER in Africa: issues, process and challenges. Facilitated by, Catherine Ngugi & Neil Butcher of OER-Africa Initiative.
- Public Health issues and OER in Africa. Facilitated by Prof Dick Heller & Omo Oaiya Peoples-Uni
- Instructional Design and collaborative authoring of OER: issues and challenges. Facilitated by Professor Santosh Panda, IGNOU.
- Quality assurance in OER. Facilitated by Professor Olugbemiro Jegede, NOUN
OER – (Open Educational resources) describes learning resources
that are freely available for use by educators and learners, without an
accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees.The main points raised during the first sub-theme Capacity building and OER in Africa: issues, process and challenges are:
- OER has powerful potentials because it removes restrictions around copying resources, The principle of allowing adaptation of materials contributes to encouraging higher education students to be active participants in educational processes.
- Critical areas in OER are learning content,i.e. course materials,learning objects and learning resources; tools, i.e. software for content and learning management systems; and implementation resources, i.e. intellectual property licenses, localization of content etc.
- There is need to change the incentive structures within universities, so that development and sharing of educational materials can create career pathways and lead to better remuneration and greater academic recognition. Change management strategies should be adopted.
- OERs can be made available in printed format, the cost of printing can be favorably compared to cost of bandwidth when learners access materials online.
- Challenges of infrastructure, bandwidth, power should not discourage universities and institutions from participating in development and utilization of OER's. Such issues are not peculiar to OER and e-learning and are consequently being addressed at macro level of governance. It should not hamper progress on the soft issues such as strategic management of the OER and e-learning services, pedagogies of e-learning, training of trainers with respect to e-learning design, deployment, implementation, operation, review, measurement and evaluation and policy & regulatory environment to govern itsoperation
The sub-theme for the second week of discussion was OERs and Public Health Capacity Building in Africa. The points highlighted were:
- Peoples-uni is an educational initiative which aims to develop educational context around Open Educational Resources to help with Public Health capacity building in low- to middle-income countries.
- All universities should be encouraged to set up centres in various communities that provide internet facilities all the time for people to come, enroll and be able to access their materials.
- Institutions like Peoples-uni will still have to partner with local institutions, so that recipients can receive the awards through them. Partnership is crucial to sustainability of initiatives.
- OERs are flexible and can be used in many ways. Increasingly Network resources (both commercial and open) are being used by students while engaged in full time face-to-face educational programs- often referred to as 'blended learning'. They can also be used to enhance learning packages for independent study modules of distance education or as resources for more interactive group based distance education programming (delivered via video, audio, web or immersive conferencing).
- Peoples Uni carried out a pilot project which involved 38 participants from eight countries with about half a dozen from Africa. The delivered content using Moodle an Open source LCMS. Details will be made available at the pre-conference workshop.
- Transparency is one reason health professionals should adopt OER's because of the sensitivity involved - 'health is life'.
- Having health professionals, ICT experts and other interest group coming together will be able to bring synergy into the work and service we intend to render. This can make crucial needs like health care readily available.
- Many resources are available for use such as free TALC CDs. They provide a wide range of carefully selected material from the Lancet, BMJ, Africa Health, Archives Diseases of Children, World Anaesthesia, PLOS Medicine, Footsteps, WHO, UNICEF, and much that is more suited to community level.
- In response to the Executive directors search for the definition of an ODL experts it was suggested such a one should be assessed on competencies in Policy Formulation Strategies, Instructional Designing, Content Development, Content Management, Implementation Procedure and Management thoughts as it affects ODL. Also, A database of ODL Associates should the created before creating an ODL expert database because an ODL Expert must first be an ODL Associate and an ODL Expert should be based on recommendations of other ODL Associates through Peer-Review mechanism.
- NOUN should collaborate with other instructions to take advantage of the World Bank/FME Stepb-Nigerian grant . A joint proposal has a high probability of sailing through. Creation of ICT parks and elearning centres will widen access to infrastructure.
The theme for the third week of discussion was Instructional Design and Collaborative Authoring of OERs. The points highlighted were:
- Context, content, reflective engagement to self learning should serve as the bases of distance learning and lifelong educatio
- The challenges contending with successful development of localized OERs by developing countries are: funding, investment, collaboration for joint creation, adoption / adaptation, ownership, training, editing and contextualisation, digitalisation, copyright researching, and evolving a culture of OERs.
- The ACDE2008 conference should serve as an opportunity for collaboration for joint content creation, while the ownership could be under the auspices of ODL in Africa.
- Some critical issues concern are: to what extent can institutions go to collaborate to develop open course resources and in what way to share; how to share student fees even if the resources are open; how should the institutions adopt/adapt the resources .
- To determine a successful instructional multimedia design piece whether for ODL purpose or otherwise, 2 issues are fundamental 'interface' and 'content'. The need to designing and developing relevant software contents pertinent to local needs, learning styles and preferences cannot be ignored.
- A reward policy of promotion and tenure time, prestige, social capital and personal exposure by the contribution coupled with the possibility of being able to sell the material in different formats as well as making it available for free may encourage many academics in developing OERs.
- Institutions can take advantage of resource persons participating in the conference to partner with bodies like CISCO.
The theme for the fourth week of discussion was : Quality Assurance and OER. The points raised were:
- Quality assurance is a critical component of OER
- Standards should be evolved by experienced e-learning international and local bodies like the COL, ACDE ..etc .Guidelines for determining aspects to be included in OER standards must be internationally agreed upon.
- Peer review is a powerful means of quality assurance because the co production of courses by a team of qualified developers will informally keep quality standards high.
- Backwards assessment of what we already are doing, without investing in innovations and change models with capacity to help guide us through times of rapid and perhaps continuous change can be counterproductive.
- Elements in a quality OER programme must be identified
and standardized; identification and matching of teachers' and learners'
styles to ensure effective OER implementation, evaluation and assessment parameters must be carefully selected and quality ensured in design for internal and external consistency.- The continuous production models often associated with OERs present problems for quality assurance
- Quality is a very slippery topic and certainly has cultural and
bureaucratic dimensions .Nevertheless the cost of any quality system must not exceed the value of the service- Relationship marketing (all activities directed to establishing,
developing and maintaining successful long term relationship with the
student and other stake holders) is a key aspect in controlling attrition and should therefore be incorporated in policy for Quality Assurance in Distance Education.I am pleased, just as many of you are, with the volume of responses and the quality of the discussion during the one-month virtual conference. I do hope that some of the issues raised would continue at the Pre conference workshops and lead us into the confenrence proper.I believe that practioners and researchers alike will also find the discussion at the Virtual Forum very useful.It only remains for mne to agian thank all of you and especially the Facilitators who sacrificed their time to guide us in the discussion of the various sub-themes. Without your participation whether as contributors or lurkers, the virtual forum would not have suceeded.Thank you all and looking forward to welcoming you to the conference on Tuesday, 8th July, 2008.Professor Olugbemiro JegedeModerator-General of the Virtual ForumACDE 2nd General Conference and Assembly.2nd July 2008
Richard Kajumbula
Greetings.
I would like to thank Prof. Jegede for the summary. This is good ground for
a bigger discussion and of course food for thought. Thank you once again and
I hope to meet all of you at ACDE 2008.
Regards
Richard Kajumbula
Incharge, Student Support Services
Department of Distance Education
Makerere University
Kampala, Uganda
Olugbemiro JEGEDE writes:
> On 7/4/08, Olugbemiro JEGEDE <jeg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear Participants,
>> I did promise to send a full summary of the Virtual Forum. Here it is and
>> hope you would find it comprehensive and useful.
>> _______________
>>
>>
>> As a fore-runner to the 2nd ACDE Conference and General Assembly to be held
>> in Lagos at the National Open University of Nigeria from 8th to 11th July
>> 2008 a Virtual Forum was held from the 2nd to 30 June 2008. The Virtual
>> Forum concentrated on emerging ideas on Open Educational Resources (OER); an
>> issue which bears tremendous significance to open and distance learning
>> (ODL) in the developing world, especially Africa. The main theme of the
>> forum was *OERs and sustainable development of Higher Education in Africa*
>> .
>>
>> The discussion held under four sub-themes namely:
>>
>> - Capacity building and OER in Africa: issues, process and challenges.
>> Facilitated by, Catherine Ngugi & Neil Butcher of OER-Africa Initiative.
>>
>>
>> - Public Health issues and OER in Africa. Facilitated by Prof Dick
>> Heller & Omo Oaiya Peoples-Uni
>>
>>
>> - Instructional Design and collaborative authoring of OER: issues and
>> challenges. Facilitated by Professor Santosh Panda, IGNOU.
>> -
>> - Quality assurance in OER. Facilitated by Professor Olugbemiro Jegede,
>> NOUN
>>
>>
>> OER – (Open Educational resources) describes learning resources
>> that are freely available for use by educators and learners, without an
>> accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees.
>>
>> The main points raised during the first sub-theme Capacity building and OER
>> in Africa: issues, process and challenges are:
>>
>> - OER has powerful potentials because it removes restrictions around
>> copying resources, The principle of allowing adaptation of materials
>> contributes to encouraging higher education students to be active
>> participants in educational processes.
>> - Critical areas in OER are *learning content*,i.e. course
>> materials,learning objects and learning resources; *tools*, i.e.
>> software for content and learning management systems; and *implementation
>> resources*, i.e. intellectual property licenses, localization of
>> content etc.
>> - There is need to change the incentive structures within universities,
>> so that development and sharing of educational materials can create career
>> pathways and lead to better remuneration and greater academic recognition.
>> Change management strategies should be adopted.
>> - OERs can be made available in printed format, the cost of printing
>> can be favorably compared to cost of bandwidth when learners access
>> materials online.
>> - Challenges of infrastructure, bandwidth, power should not discourage
>> universities and institutions from participating in development and
>> utilization of OER's. Such issues are not peculiar to OER and e-learningand are consequently being addressed at macro level of governance. It should
>> not hamper progress on the soft issues such as strategic management of
>> the OER and e-learning services, pedagogies of e-learning, training of
>> trainers with respect to e-learning design, deployment, implementation,
>> operation, review, measurement and evaluation and policy & regulatory
>> environment to govern itsoperation
>>
>>
>> The sub-theme for the second week of discussion was OERs and Public
>> Health Capacity Building in Africa. The points highlighted were:
>>
>>
>>
>> - Peoples-uni is an educational initiative which aims to develop
>> educational context around Open Educational Resources to help with Public
>> Health capacity building in low- to middle-income countries.
>> - All universities should be encouraged to set up centres in various communities
>> that provide internet facilities all the time for people to come,
>> enroll and be able to access their materials.
>> - Institutions like Peoples-uni will still have to partner with local
>> institutions, so that recipients can receive the awards through them.
>> Partnership is crucial to sustainability of initiatives.
>> - OERs are flexible and can be used in many ways. Increasingly Network
>> resources (both commercial and open) are being used by students while
>> engaged in full time face-to-face educational programs- often referred to as
>> 'blended learning'. They can also be used to enhance learning packages
>> for independent study modules of distance education or as resources
>> for more interactive group based distance education programming
>> (delivered via video, audio, web or immersive conferencing).
>> - Peoples Uni carried out a pilot project which involved 38
>> participants from eight countries with about half a dozen from Africa. The
>> delivered content using Moodle an Open source LCMS. Details will be made
>> available at the pre-conference workshop.
>> - Transparency is one reason health professionals should adopt OER's
>> because of the sensitivity involved - 'health is life'.
>> - Having health professionals, ICT experts and other interest group
>> coming together will be able to bring synergy into the work and service we
>> intend to render. This can make crucial needs like health care readily
>> available.
>> - Many resources are available for use such as free TALC CDs. They
>> provide a wide range of carefully selected material from the Lancet, BMJ,
>> Africa Health, Archives Diseases of Children, World Anaesthesia, PLOS
>> Medicine, Footsteps, WHO, UNICEF, and much that is more suited to community
>> level.
>> - In response to the Executive directors search for the definition of
>> an ODL experts it was suggested such a one should be assessed on
>> competencies in Policy Formulation Strategies, Instructional Designing,
>> Content Development, Content Management, Implementation Procedure and
>> Management thoughts as it affects ODL. Also, A database of ODL Associates
>> should the created before creating an ODL expert database because an ODL
>> Expert must first be an ODL Associate and an ODL Expert should be based on
>> recommendations of other ODL Associates through Peer-Review mechanism.
>> - NOUN should collaborate with other instructions to take advantage of
>> the World Bank/FME Stepb-Nigerian grant . A joint proposal has a high
>> probability of sailing through. Creation of ICT parks and elearning centres
>> will widen access to infrastructure.
>>
>> The theme for the third week of discussion was Instructional Design and
>> Collaborative Authoring of OERs. The points highlighted were:
>>
>> - Context, content, reflective engagement to self learning should
>> serve as the bases of distance learning and lifelong educatio
>> - The challenges contending with successful development of localized
>> OERs by developing countries are: funding, investment, collaboration for
>> joint creation, adoption / adaptation, ownership, training, editing and
>> contextualisation, digitalisation, copyright researching, and evolving a
>> culture of OERs.
>> - The ACDE2008 conference should serve as an opportunity for
>> collaboration for joint content creation, while the ownership could be under
>> the auspices of ODL in Africa.
>> - Some critical issues concern are: to what extent can institutions go
>> to collaborate to develop open course resources and in what way to share;
>> how to share student fees even if the resources are open; how should the
>> institutions adopt/adapt the resources .
>> - To determine a successful instructional multimedia design piece
>> whether for ODL purpose or otherwise, 2 issues are fundamental 'interface'
>> and 'content'. The need to designing and developing relevant software
>> contents pertinent to local needs, learning styles and preferences cannot be
>> ignored.
>> - A reward policy of promotion and tenure time, prestige, social
>> capital and personal exposure by the contribution coupled with the
>> possibility of being able to sell the material in different formats as well
>> as making it available for free may encourage many academics in developing
>> OERs.
>> - Institutions can take advantage of resource persons participating in
>> the conference to partner with bodies like CISCO.
>>
>>
>>
>> The theme for the fourth week of discussion was *: Quality Assurance and
>> OER*. The points raised were:
>>
>>
>>
>> - Quality assurance is a critical component of OER
>> - Standards should be evolved by experienced e-learning international
>> and local bodies like the COL, ACDE ..etc .Guidelines for determining
>> aspects to be included in OER standards must be internationally agreed upon.
>> - Peer review is a powerful means of quality assurance because the co
>> production of courses by a team of qualified developers will
>> informally keep quality standards high.
>> - Backwards assessment of what we already are doing, without
>> investing in innovations and change models with capacity to help guide us
>> through times of rapid and perhaps continuous change can be
>> counterproductive.
>> - Elements in a quality OER programme must be identified
>> and standardized; identification and matching of teachers' and
>> learners'
>> styles to ensure effective OER implementation, evaluation and
>> assessment parameters must be carefully selected and quality ensured in
>> design for internal and external consistency.
>> - The continuous production models often associated with OERs present
>> problems for quality assurance
>>
>>
>> - Quality is a very slippery topic and certainly has cultural and
>> bureaucratic dimensions .Nevertheless the cost of any quality system
>> must not exceed the value of the service
>> - Relationship marketing (all activities directed to establishing,
Toyin Oloniteru
moderator-general for this. It is highly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Olutoyin J. Oloniteru
2008/7/4 Olugbemiro JEGEDE <jeg...@gmail.com>:
--
Toyin Oloniteru
Lagos, Nigeria
Email: toyin.o...@gmail.com
Cell:2348022920006
Santosh Panda
Thank you very much indeed for your encouragement, keen follow-up and
guidance, and finally for an excellent summary of the issues emerging
from the virtual forums. The issues are all crucial, and we shall try
our best to address them at the pre-con workshop and in the main
conference.
Sincere thanks to NOUN and its vice chancellor for all the care and
guidance to all of us.
I am looking forward to the Pre-Con Workshop on 'Researching Open and
Distance Learning' which I shall facilitate and in which we shall
further explore researching many of the issues that emerged and summed
up at your final summary.
Warm regards.
Santosh
Professor Santosh Panda
--
Santosh Panda, PhD,
Professor of Distance Education & Director,
Staff Training & Research Institute of Distance Education,
Indira Gandhi National Open University,
New Delhi 110068, India. www.ignou.ac.in/institute/profpanda/FINAL/Home.htm
Phone:+91-11-29535399; Fax: +91-11-29533073
Chief Editor: Indian Journal of Open Learning
http://www.ignou.ac.in/ijol/ijol.html
Book: Planning & Management in Distance Education (London: Routledge)
http://www.amazon.com/Planning-Management-Distance-Education-Flexible/dp/0749440686/sr=8-1/qid=1171779121/ref=sr_1_1/103-8974105-9691808?ie=UTF8&s=books