Learning for Development in the Context of South Africa: Considerations for Open Education Resources in Improving Higher Education Outcomes
Education is at the core of South Africa’s national development. The National Development Plan recognizes the potential of education to transform individuals and drive attainment of other development goals. The country’s higher education system is characterized by low participation and high attrition. This presents challenges for the attainment of targets set by the NDP. A number of Open... more
Open Educational Resources and Change in Higher Education: Reflections from Practice
This book is evidence of the solid progress being made in response to the challenges flagged at the 2009 UNESCO conferences discussing the potential of OER. Activity in developing countries accounts for the majority of the work reported here, and the experience of using and repurposing OER receives as much coverage as their initial development. Other papers describe how OER can be fitted... more
Exploring the Business Case for Open Educational Resources
This study was commissioned by the Commonwealth of Learning as an input to the World OER Congress organized by UNESCO in June 2012. The authors, Neil Butcher and Sarah Hoose situate the contribution of OER in the wider context of the challenges facing education at all levels in an era of economic stringency. They relate OER to the realities of the teaching-learning process, arguing that... more
Creating Learning Materials for Open and Distance Learning: A Handbook for Authors and Instructional Designers
This handbook has been written for anyone who plans and writes learning materials for use in open and distance learning (ODL). Anyone who is interested in producing better ODL materials will find something of value in this handbook. more
Knowledge Management Strategies for Distance Education
During the past century, rapid development of an information society and growth in the quantity of accessible information was given considerable momentum with the development of information and communication technologies (ICT), which allow people to interact with each other and to share digital information relatively easily. An example of this is the Internet. For many people the information... more
