During the week of 20^th July, 2020, OER Africa was privileged to be able to participate in, and provide administrative support to, the work of UNESCO’s Dynamic Coalition as its Working Groups convened in virtual consultations to begin preparing plans to support governments around the world in operationalizing the OER Recommendation. This article provides an update on the latest activities of the Dynamic Coalition and offers links to the various resources that are being shared.

The Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) (40 C/32) was adopted at the 40^th UNESCO General Conference in Paris on 25^th November 2019 as the culmination of a long process of UNESCO engagement with the concept of OER. Following adoption of the OER Recommendation, UNESCO launched the OER Dynamic Coalition on 2 March 2020 to support its widespread adoption. OER Africa has been actively involved in all the processes that led to adoption of the OER Recommendation and continues to support UNESCO in this important work through its engagement in the activities of the Dynamic Coalition. This includes, amongst other activities, chairing the Working Group on Communications as the Dynamic Coalition consults stakeholders to prepare implementation plans.

The multi-stakeholder Coalition aims to expand and consolidate commitments to actions and strategies, as well as reinforce international cooperation among all stakeholders in the four areas of the Recommendation:

• Building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER;

• Developing supportive policy;

• Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER; and

• Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER.

The Coalition’s webpage is accessible here and the final report is available here.

UNESCO hosted a set of worldwide public consultations from 22-24 July 2020, the aim being to expand and consolidate commitments to actions and strategies as well as reinforce international cooperation among all stakeholders in these four areas. Stakeholders come from all regions of the world and include representatives from government, inter-governmental organizations, NGOs, educational institutions, associations and networks, and research agencies, amongst others. Central to the organization of the event were efforts for geographic balance, gender balance and a multisectoral approach, contributing to a diverse set of inputs and conversations. The consultations aimed to follow-up on an online survey (distributed by UNESCO to participants in the OER Recommendation activities and administered from 10 to 20 July) that collected information on priority areas of action. As such, the objectives were to:

• Further clarify the priority areas of action per Working Group; and

• Identify activities and issues related to the establishment of an electronic tool for information sharing and collaboration on the activities of participating organizations.

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, all consultations took place online. While this introduced certain challenges, it also allowed more widespread participation from a very diverse group of stakeholders, including many people who likely would not have been able to engage had the sessions been face to face at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The online meeting formats, allowing simultaneous audio and text-based contributions generated very rich feedback. OER Africa, which is leading the Working Group on Communications for the OER Dynamic Coalition and part of the Advisory Group for the OER Coalition, served as the Rapporteur for Online Consultation.  Furthermore, OER Africa has made recordings of all the consultative sessions, as well as the presentations made throughout, accessible on our website here.

The report from these consultations is expected to be completed during August as part of the following programme of activities:

In follow-up articles, we will present the final report when it becomes publicly available and provide further updates on the work of the Dynamic Coalition. We will also explore in more detail some of the suggested actions and associated challenges that may be experienced as UNESCO and its partners (including OER Africa) seek to give practical expression to the goals of the OER Recommendation and thereby ensure that OER practices are adopted on scale in ways that truly help to improving the educational experience for students at all levels around the world.

For more articles in this series, click on the links below.

• OER Africa COVID-19 Statement (3 April, 2020)
• Understanding OER in a Context that Necessitates Remote Learning (9 April 2020)
• Showcasing OER Platforms: OER Africa (15 April, 2020)
• Online (and offline) reading resources for children (23 April, 2020)
• How to Find Open Content (30 April, 2020)
• OER Repositories in Africa (8 May, 2020)
• Emergency Remote Teaching Webinar Series – All resources available (18 May 2020)
• Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open African research repositories (29 May 2020)
• Podcast: OER and their Relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic (5 June 2020)
• Sharing Africa’s knowledge through openly licensed publishing (11 June 2020)
• Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open data (18 June 2020)
• Adapting Open Content (25 June 2020)
• Evaluating Open Content (2 July 2020)
• How can OpenCourseWare help you to improve your courses?

Saide and OER Africa would like to extend their deepest condolences to Professor Tolly Mbwette’s family and friends.

Professor Mbwette was the former Vice Chancellor of the Open University of Tanzania.

We are particularly grateful for Prof Mbwette’s contribution to Saide’s OER Africa initiative to promote use of OER in African universities. He participated actively in the inception gathering for OER Africa in 2008 and in subsequent reviews and strategic planning meetings. He was always available to provide support and advice to the initiative, as well as being a generous and convivial dinner companion. 

In one phase of the initiative, he facilitated the commitment of the Open University of Tanzania’s to developing “Academic Digital Fluency” courses as open educational resources. These are available here.

Prof Mbwete was passionate and a great proponent for open learning and distance education in Africa. He firmly believed that distance universities have to play a very active role in expanding access to higher education in Africa. He served in a number of institutions and capacities at continental level to advance his belief and conviction on distance education.

He served as Vice Chairperson of the Executive Board of the African Council for Distance Education (ACDE) between July 2008 and July 2011 as well as one of the two Vice Chairpersons of the IUCEA Governing Board from July 2008 to June 2010. 

From September 2009, Prof Mbwette was an Honorary Advisor to the Commonwealth of Learning (COL).  In July 2011, he was elected as the President of ACDE for a period of three (3) years

The late Prof Mbwette will be sorely missed by the open and distance education community in African for his passion and commitment. His brilliance, humility and quest to achieve universal education transformed distance and open education. He left a legacy of achieving universal access to high quality higher education in Africa.

Image source: Nick Morrison, Unsplash

What is OpenCourseWare?

• A free and open digital publication of high-quality educational materials, organized as courses.
• Available for use and adaptation under an open licence, such as certain Creative Commons licences.
• Not normally certified.

Source: UCI Open

OER Africa will cover MOOCs in an upcoming article.

Advantages and Disadvantages of using OCW

The main advantage of OCW for academics who are developing courses is the open licence, which enables adaptation and reuse, but other benefits include:

• OCW provides complete modules or courses, which can be very helpful if you are starting a course from scratch, providing you a template from which to work.
• OCW development in an institution can encourage academics to foster and use OER if they have not previously had experience in doing so.
• Course developers can share ideas and curricula openly, examine and adopt courses from other institutions, and potentially put their own courses online.
• By sharing courses openly, institutions can attract new students to enrol and be certified for a formal qualification.

Some disadvantages:

In adopting someone else’s course, you are taking on their pedagogy and course structure, which may not suit your own style. For example, many OCW consist mainly of ‘talking heads’ and presentation slides, which can result in the student being a passive rather than active agent. Modern teaching theory stresses the need for active student engagement to enable them to construct their own knowledge rather than learn a series of facts. A further disadvantage is that many OCW are produced in developed country settings, and cannot easily be transferred to other contexts without considerable adaptation. On the other hand, of course, the open licence allows just this adaptation (though sometimes trying to adapt an existing course can end up taking longer than developing it from scratch if the differences between what is there and what you need is too great).

Where can I find OCW?

OCW available on the Internet can be used in various ways, both by academics in Higher Education Institutions and by other educators. Quality courses from providers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Open University (UK) or the University of Michigan can be accessed, and (if they are openly licenced) provide an impetus for lecturers to revise them into contextualised programmes for a developing country context. Academics can encourage their students to work through particular OCW to supplement their own learning. Teachers and other professionals can undertake their own development by working through courses relevant to their practice.

OER Africa has various OCW offerings available:

• The Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) Mathematics to assist teachers in their understanding upper primary and middle school maths as well as teaching issues relating to mathematical content: https://www.oerafrica.org/acemaths
• The ACE School Leadership and Management is aimed at empowering school leaders to lead and manage schools effectively: https://www.oerafrica.org/advanced-certificate-education
• The Household Food Security Programme aims to train household food security facilitators to work as change agents in the areas of agriculture, food and nutrition, focusing on households within communities.: https://www.oerafrica.org/household-food-security-programme
• The Partnership for Enhanced and Blended Learning (PEBL) assists university partners across East Africa to develop courses that can be offered by participant universities through blended learning: https://www.oerafrica.org/partnership-enhanced-and-blended-learning-pebl
• The Agshare II project, a collaboration between three HEIs in Ethiopia and Uganda on agricultural issues, lists a number of courseware documents under the list of Resources, while Communication Skills courseware developed by the University of Malawi is available at the IADP-SADC Digital Resources Project.

In summary, OCW can assist academics in higher education to improve their own offerings, and encourage them to share their own courses for the benefit of others. OCW can also assist students wishing to access courses within higher education that otherwise might not be available to them. However, as with all OER, you are ultimately responsible for assessing their utility by comparing what you find with your own understanding of what is needed to run your courses successfully.

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For more articles in this series, click on the links below.

• OER Africa COVID-19 Statement (3 April, 2020)
• Understanding OER in a Context that Necessitates Remote Learning (9 April 2020)
• Showcasing OER Platforms: OER Africa (15 April, 2020)
• Online (and offline) reading resources for children (23 April, 2020)
• How to Find Open Content (30 April, 2020)
• OER Repositories in Africa (8 May, 2020)
• Emergency Remote Teaching Webinar Series – All resources available (18 May 2020)
• Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open African research repositories (29 May 2020)
• Podcast: OER and their Relevance to the COVID-19 pandemic (5 June 2020)
• Sharing Africa’s knowledge through openly licensed publishing (11 June 2020)
• Sharing Africa’s knowledge through open data (18 June 2020)
• Adapting Open Content (25 June 2020)
• Evaluating Open Content (2 July 2020)