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Thursday, 12th August 2021

Image courtesy of Billy Chester, Unsplash

On 9 August, 2021 the world’s leading climate scientists delivered their starkest warning yet about the deepening climate emergency. Sustainable food systems and climate change are pressing global issues that go hand in hand. Will these challenges be left to the youth because they will be most affected? This article will explore what role OER can play in empowering youth to transform food systems.

International Youth Day, which takes place on 12 August, aims to bring youth issues and challenges to the attention of the international community while also celebrating the potential of youth as partners in today’s global society.

Glover and Sumberg [1] explain why the youth are an important demographic:

Today's youth generation is the largest in history, and the global population of young people is concentrated in low- and middle-income countries located in South and East Asia and Africa (The World Bank, 2006; IFAD, 2019). The interests and needs of this youth generation are important, not only because they are many, but because they will need–indeed, they are entitled to expect–decent work and livelihoods, as well as long and healthy lives; yet, to achieve this objective for so many people will be challenging in an era of ecological stress. From a development perspective, today's youth generation is on the front line: it will have to cope with the effects of environmental and climate change, which are likely to accelerate and intensify during their lifetimes and those of their children.

The 2021 theme for International Youth Day is ‘Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health’. In Africa, food security and sustainable farming practices have always been important. While the agricultural industry continues to be the largest source of employment in many African countries, off-farm food-related activities are expected to be important for future job opportunities, including for youth.[2]

Stakeholders in the educational and agricultural sectors need to ensure that youth have the support mechanisms to amplify efforts collectively and individually to protect the Earth and life, while integrating biodiversity in the transformation of food systems. Given the planet’s growing population, producing sufficient healthier food sustainably will not ensure human and planetary wellbeing if other crucial challenges are not also tackled, such as social inclusion, health care, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation. [3]

Empowered youths can lead community development efforts to facilitate the improvement of lives in their community, appreciating and supporting cultural differences, and being custodians of the land, water and wildlife. Youth in Africa are expressing strong readiness and passion in actively contributing to the processes of delivering solutions that transform food systems. [4]

The next generation recognises that our future depends on functioning food systems, and at the same time, it is Africa’s youth that holds the power to deliver them. To begin with, young Africans are informed and educated, alert to the twin threats to our prosperity of malnutrition and climate change. We do not farm like our parents and grandparents farmed, nor do we eat the way our forebears ate.

 – Mike Nkhombo Khunga, Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Global Youth Leader, Malawi, and vice-chair of the UN Food Systems Summit's Action Track 5: building resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks and stresses [5]

How can OER empower youth to fulfil this role?

Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) in agriculture faces specific challenges, such as a lack of formalized training programmes and agriculture not being an aspirational career.[6] OER can be used as an important building block for skills development in the TVET sector. This is especially important in the field of agriculture and food systems, as openly licensed content can be contextualized and adapted to be culturally and environmentally relevant, while documenting agricultural practices can help to share these beyond local communities. Agricultural content for TVET needs to be linked to advances in technology, facilitate innovation, and have greater relevance to a diverse and evolving agricultural sector, with a focus on agribusiness and entrepreneurship. Digital technologies, OER, and open education practices in this sector can provide access to innovative models of agricultural processes and marketing that may not have been accessible before. They can also provide a means for sharing this knowledge from one generation to the next, despite the change in many rural societies where more children are enrolled in school and spend less time in the fields with their elders. Open education practices can, when well implemented, contribute to reduce the costs of producing and distributing course material, expand access, meeting the needs of learners in different contexts, and therefore be beneficial to learners in the developing world. 

OERs can contribute to making informal and formal skills training accessible and affordable  in the farming and food systems industries. Beyond technical skills, building capacity for effective management, decision-making, communication, and leadership are required to create jobs in the agricultural sector. OERs can be part of finding, implementing, and sharing innovative solutions to make employment in food systems appealing and to strengthen different sectors managing our food from farm to fork, while ensuring the existing knowledge is not lost on the way. These OERs can be integrated or adapted for community development programmes or used for informal learning if they are accessible, thereby enabling and supporting youth to become leaders in the development of sustainable and resilient food systems.

  • OER Africa has resources on food security and African agricultural practices, some of which were developed as part of a programme to train household food security facilitators to work as change agents in the areas of agriculture, food and nutrition using participatory learning in a structured environment focusing on households within communities.

All the resources developed for this programme are available here:  https://www.oerafrica.org/household-food-security-programme

  • The Young Professionals for Agricultural Development website has some suggestions for ways to engage youth in agriculture.
  • Digital Green works with partners to create digital solutions to assist rural communities and increase the effectiveness of smallholder farmers in the developing world. These solutions are shared using a CC BY licence and include production and dissemination of community videos to share knowledge [7] and using open-source software to share data to assist farmers boost agricultural productivity and food security.
  • African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) works toward inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for Africa by strengthening the production and dissemination of more gender-responsive agricultural research and innovation. AWARD invests in African scientists, research institutions, and agribusinesses so that they can deliver agricultural innovations that better respond to the needs and priorities of a diversity of women and men across Africa’s agricultural value chains.
  • This toolkit synthesizes a decade of learnings and resources from agriculture and forestry mentoring programmes implemented by Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD), the International Forestry Students’ Association (IFSA) and AWARD.
  • This NEPAD concept note provides information on how to curate openly licensed skills development course materials and content aimed at African youth.

There is increasing urgency to tackle global issues such as climate change and food system challenges. African youth lie at the centre of opportunities to galvanize and sustain positive change at a systemic level and OER provide an invaluable tool to assist them with the skills and knowledge to do so.


Related articles

Why is ‘Open Education’ important?

Promoting diversity and inclusion in the OER space

Open pedagogy

 

Access the OER Africa communications archive

 

[1] Glover D and Sumberg J. (2020). Youth and Food Systems Transformation. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 4:101. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00101/full

[2] Townsend et al., 2017 in Glover D and Sumberg J. (2020). Youth and Food Systems Transformation. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 4:101. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00101/full

[6] Brown, T., and Majumdar, S. (2020). ‘Agricultural TVET in developing economies: Challenges and possibilities’ UNEVOC Network Discussion Paper. Available from www.unevoc.unesco.org/l/687

 

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Examining technology’s role in education: UNESCO’s inaugural Digital Learning Week
September, 4, 2023

From 4 to 7 September 2023, we celebrate the inaugural Digital Learning Week – a reframing of what was previously known as Mobile Learning Week. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) will convene in-person events for policymakers, practitioners, educators, private sector partners, researchers, and development agencies.

Image courtesy of Siphosihle Mkhwanazi, Wikimedia (CC BY-SA)

This week, we celebrate the inaugural Digital Learning Week – a reframing of what was previously known as Mobile Learning Week. From 4 to 7 September 2023, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) will convene in-person events for policymakers, practitioners, educators, private sector partners, researchers, and development agencies.

Under the theme ‘Steering technology for education’, the event will explore public digital learning platforms and generative AI, examining how both can be steered to reinforce and enrich humanistic education.

Plenary sessions, panel discussions and public lectures will be livestreamed. The full programme, including links to each session, is available here.

Some highlights to look forward to include:

For more information, visit the Digital Learning Week page.

Related articles

African Librarians Support the UNESCO OER Recommendation
August, 29, 2023

In August 2023, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) co-published an Overview for African Librarians on the UNESCO OER Recommendation and Open Knowledge.

A William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grant to NBA funded the research and writing entailed in producing the Overview.

Figure 1: AfLIA poster on the UNESCO OER Recommendation

The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) is significant to all those who are interested in and committed to ensuring that all learners have access to appropriate high-quality educational content, including librarians. It was approved unanimously by UNESCO member states in November 2019.

In August 2023, the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) co-published an Overview for African Librarians on the UNESCO OER Recommendation and Open Knowledge.[1] A William and Flora Hewlett Foundation grant to NBA funded the research and writing entailed in producing the Overview.

The Overview explores how the OER Recommendation’s five action areas are relevant to librarians and what librarians can do to support their implementation. It examines how the OER Recommendation relates to the different library types in Africa and the user communities the libraries represent.

It further aims to help African librarians develop a deeper understanding of OER, including the kinds of open content that will resonate with library users. OER is consonant with other equally important principles for librarians—access to equitable, suitable, and relevant content for easy sharing and interoperability of knowledge within Africa.  All these facets are included in the Overview.

The Overview is filled with insights and stories from librarians on open knowledge and open licensing, including how traditional knowledge, culture, and languages can be used in creating and adapting openly licensed content.

AfLIA also produced a comic strip to explain to librarians why OER and UNESCO’s OER Recommendation are so important.  Comic strips on teaching are becoming increasingly popular;  Google has a full page of images, as does OER Commons. But we could not find a comic strip to explain open licensing or OER…until AfLIA came along and created one.

If you would like more information on the Overview or would be interested in joining related discussions, please write to Nkem Osuigwe, AfLIA’s Director of Human Capacity Development and Training.  Her email address is neosuigwe@aflia.net.
 

Figure 2: AfLIA poster on collecting and opening up Africa's heritage

 

 

Three ways Artificial Intelligence could change how we use Open Educational Resources
July, 28, 2023

Over the past year, news about Artificial Intelligence (AI) has abounded. Information about breakthroughs and new applications have become commonplace, and we have been thrust into a world where AI-enabled technologies are starting to change how we work and live.

In this article, we consider three ways that AI might change how we use OER.

Introduction

Over the past year, news about Artificial Intelligence (AI) has abounded. Information about breakthroughs and new applications have become commonplace, and we have been thrust into a world where AI-enabled technologies are starting to change how we work and live. For better or for worse, we have ushered in the era of AI.

Many are asking what the implications of this might be for the education sector. Will it affect teaching and learning positively or negatively? How can AI-enabled technologies personalize education – and will this be educationally beneficial? What organizations are already working on AI in education and how, if at all, is this work regulated? An air of uncertainty pervades the sector in terms of the benefits and risks of harnessing AI in education.

At OER Africa, we have written extensively on how Open Educational Resources (OER) might improve aspects of education, including access, relevance, and quality. Likewise, the intersection of OER and AI necessitates greater exploration, particularly given the opportunities that it offers to scale access to high quality education.

In this article, we consider three ways that AI might change how we use OER.

How AI could change our engagement with OER

1. OER Content Development

AI tools can be used to develop new OER using natural language processing and machine learning capabilities. They might be able to help educators create interactive learning materials, assessments, and learning simulations, expanding the range of available OER and enabling novel teaching practices.

One of the most popular platforms that demonstrates such capabilities is ChatGPT (or Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer), an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. Since its release in November 2022, is has amassed over 100 million users.

There is no doubt that generative tools like ChatGPT hold great potential to save time and effort for OER creators. With a few well-crafted prompts, ChatGPT can: generate thousands of words on a subject; create dozens of sample questions that could be included in an open textbook for learners to be able to self-evaluate their own learning; create lesson plans and assignments; and develop question prompts that can be used as asynchronous discussion prompts in discussion forums.[1]  However, it is crucial that OER creators use their own expertise to check that what is generated by ChatGPT is indeed correct.

For educators working with OER, copyright ownership of AI-generated works is important to determine as, by definition, OER are materials unencumbered by legal restrictions that may prevent the reuse, sharing, redistribution, and adaptation of copyrightable works. While some are using the rise of generative AI to question the validity of copyright itself, the question of who owns the copyright when a work is created by AI is a very murky area, both legally and ethically.[2,3]  When we asked ChatGPT whether the content it produces is openly licensed, it had the following to say:

As of my last update in September 2021, the content generated by ChatGPT and similar AI language models is not openly licensed. AI language models, including ChatGPT based on the GPT-3.5 architecture, are proprietary technologies developed by organizations like OpenAI.

…Therefore, when using content generated by ChatGPT or any other AI language model, it is essential to review the terms of service, usage policies, and any specific guidelines provided by the organization that owns the AI model to ensure compliance with their requirements.

It's worth noting that the field of AI and its legal and ethical implications are continually evolving, and there might be changes or developments in the licensing and usage of AI-generated content beyond my last update. I recommend checking with the organization that provides the AI service for the most current and accurate information regarding the licensing and usage of their AI-generated content.[4]

We recommend that users of these technologies stay abreast of these kinds of debates, read terms of service of the organizations that create these technologies, pay close attention to licensing conditions, and state clearly when they have used AI tools to generate intellectual property.

2. Personalized Learning

Some AI algorithms can develop tailored recommendations for OER based on a learner's performance, learning preferences, and development areas. This implies that learners can use OER that meet their requirements, making the learning pathway more engaging and effective.

For example, Siyavula is a South African organization that provides personalized and adaptive learning platforms. Siyavula has produced book titles from Grades 4-12. These are high quality OER that are aligned with the South African curriculum for mathematics, physics and chemistry. Learners can now also access Siyavula’s adaptive learning software, which adjusts the difficulty levels of exercises through machine learning to cater to each learner’s individual needs.[5]

3. Translation and Localization

AI can enable translation and localization of openly licensed content. Software with machine translation capabilities, such as Google Translate, can translate OER into different languages, facilitating knowledge sharing. It is always recommended that users state when they have used these kinds of tools for translation purposes.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been exploring the use of AI for the translation and localization of educational content. It has collaborated with partners to develop machine translation systems and tools that bridge language gaps in accessing OER. For example, the Global Digital Library (GDL) collects existing high-quality openly licensed reading resources and makes them available on the web, mobile and for print. The platform also supports translation and localization of GDL-resources to more than 300 languages. UNESCO partnered with the GDL team under the auspices of the Norwegian Programme for Capacity Development in Higher Education and Research for Development (known as NORAD) and the Global Book Alliance to launch the GDL in Asia. Reading materials in 41 Asian languages, including seven Nepali languages were launched.[6]

Despite the benefits of integrating AI into OER, there are several potential challenges and concerns. For example, the issue of data privacy has received a lot of attention recently, as the use of AI algorithms often entails the collection and analysis of user data. Ensuring that such data is stored securely and used responsibly is critical to maintaining the trust and privacy of both learners and educators.[7]

A second challenge is the potential for AI to exacerbate existing inequalities in education. As AI-powered OER become more widespread, there is a risk that those who cannot access such resources or platforms may be left behind due to unstable internet connections for example. There may also be inherent biases in the data that is used to train AI models, such as a lack of data from Sub-Saharan African countries. Thus, introducing measures to ensure that AI-driven educational tools are accessible to learners regardless of their geography or socioeconomic contexts is key to promoting educational equity.[8]

Conclusion

Regardless of one’s outlook on the impact that AI could have on society over time, its integration into most spheres of our lives in some shape or form is progressing fast. With regard to OER, AI offers exciting opportunities to augment the production, dissemination, and access to quality educational resources. However, rolling out such capabilities means that we need to consider potential shortfalls, including that we might inadvertently inhibit access to such platforms for those who face educational barriers.

Some further reading on this topic:

Related articles in OER Africa’s archive

[1] Lalonde, C. (2023). ChatGPT and Open Education. BC Campus. Retrieved from: https://bccampus.ca/2023/03/06/chatgpt-and-open-education/

[2] Lalonde, C. (2023). ChatGPT and Open Education. BC Campus. Retrieved from: https://bccampus.ca/2023/03/06/chatgpt-and-open-education/

[3] See article here

[4] Conversation with ChatGPT on 24 July, 2023. OpenAI's ChatGPT, based on the GPT-3.5 architecture.

[5] See article here

[6] See article here

[7] Frackiewicz, M. (2023). AI in Robotic Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://ts2.space/en/ai-in-robotic-open-educational-resources/#:~:text=AI%2Dpowered%20chatbots%2C%20for%20instance,thinking%20and%20problem%2Dsolving%20skills.

[8] Frackiewicz, M. (2023). AI in Robotic Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://ts2.space/en/ai-in-robotic-open-educational-resources/#:~:text=AI%2Dpowered%20chatbots%2C%20for%20instance,thinking%20and%20problem%2Dsolving%20skills

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