Final note as facilitator of week one
Neil Butcher
Hi everyone,
It was wonderful last week to see an increase in the quantity of postings to this forum.
While I will continue to participate actively in the discussion, sub-Theme One on capacity Building comes to an end this week. This week we move onto “Public Health Issues and OER in Africa to extend the discussion, so the facilitation role will be moving to Dick Heller and Omo Oaiya.
I have a few closing comments to make in response to the many interesting options made by participants towards the end of last week.
Adewale noted that many participants may not be very familiar with OERs. I suggest you start with the following links to help with this:
1. Open Educational Resources: Introduction Booklet and Webinar - topics.developmentgateway.org/rc/filedownload.do?itemId=1120738 – a simple introduction to OER.
2. OLCOS Roadmap 2012 - http://www.olcos.org/english/roadmap/ - A good and thorough overview of OER issues.
3. 80 Open Education Resource (OER) Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives - http://oedb.org/library/features/80-oer-tools. The title speaks for itself. Olugbenga, if you study these links, you will find many links to relevant assessment resources.
Felix asks for more insight about the problem of encouraging participation of academics in OER Initiatives given the “publish or perish” culture that is dominant in many institutions. It will be great to hear more from others on this front. My personal experience is that the only sustainable way to change this is to change 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. This is why OER development really demands changes to institutional policies to succeed. Sunday amplified this point in his posting, which stresses the importance of change management strategies.
Tunde asked the question of who bears the cost of print and distribution if one is creating printed versions of materials. This question also could apply equally to who bears the cost of connectivity when materials are web-based or the costs of CD production and distribution if materials are distributed on CD. This will vary from institution to institution. What I have seen is often problematic attempts for institutions to shift the cost of materials production to students by making printed materials available online or on CD. In this example, the cost does not decline, it is just being shifted, often to students who are already struggling to pay fees, which can be problematic. The key point, though, is that OER will not remove all of these costs, and it is false to pretend they will. What they can do is remove the cost of ‘renting’ Intellectual Property from publishers, while also reducing materials development costs over time by creating pools of open available resources for use and adaptation. Of course, these are not justifiable savings unless the quality of the OER being produced is high. As always, users/adapters of such services will only succeed if they are able to make effective judgements about what is worth using and what is not. My experience is that this requires experience and expertise, so capacity-building becomes essential.
I look forward to continuing to participate in the discussion this week.
Regards
Neil
Neil Butcher and Associates
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Professor Olugbemiro Jegede
We now must move on to the second week's topic which is on Health issues and OER in Africa.
May I now invite our Facilitators for this week: Richard and Omo Oiaya to begin with their first message.
Thank you.
Olu Jegede. Moderator-General
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
-----Original Message-----
From: "Neil Butcher" <neil...@icon.co.za>
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 11:22:39
To:<acde-2008-onlin...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Final note as facilitator of week one
Hi everyone,
It was wonderful last week to see an increase in the quantity of postings to this forum.
While I will continue to participate actively in the discussion, sub-Theme One on capacity Building comes to an end this week. This week we move onto “Public Health Issues and OER in Africa to extend the discussion, so the facilitation role will be moving to Dick Heller and Omo Oaiya.
I have a few closing comments to make in response to the many interesting options made by participants towards the end of last week.
Adewale noted that many participants may not be very familiar with OERs. I suggest you start with the following links to help with this:
2. OLCOS Roadmap 2012 - <http://www.olcos.org/english/roadmap/> http://www.olcos.org/english/roadmap/ - A good and thorough overview of OER issues.
3. 80 Open Education Resource (OER) Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives - <http://oedb.org/library/features/80-oer-tools> http://oedb.org/library/features/80-oer-tools. The title speaks for itself. Olugbenga, if you study these links, you will find many links to relevant assessment resources.