OER Africa has prepared toolkits in which users can find a collection of relevant information, guides, and templates pertaining to OERs, particularly issues around using and adapting OER materials. The purpose of the toolkits is to support the development and production of open educational materials that can be integrated into high quality programmes of learning.
The following toolkits are currently available. Help us to build practical and up-to-date toolkits by sharing your comments, suggestions, and relevant resources on our feedback page.
Copyright and Licensing Toolkit
This toolkit is aimed at higher education stakeholders who are working with Open Educational Resources (OER). It explains the notion of copyright and describes the different licensing options available to the author/creator of a work. Whether you are wanting to license your own work, or are tasked with clearing copyrighted documents, you will find comprehensive information about the basic concepts in copyright and licensing, the types of open licences that exist, and tools and techniques to provide support.
Copyright comprises a number of different rights, some of which can be legally assigned to others, often by means of a licence. Such licences determine how others might use that work, including whether or not they can access, use, print, copy, distribute, display, perform, modify or sell that work – in practice changing the status from ‘all rights reserved’ to ‘some rights reserved’.
Course Design and Materials Development Guide
Course and materials design and development is a multi-layered, multi-faceted process. This Guide will help you to think about five questions in relation to a number of key issues such as planning, content, context, learner support, structure, resources, learning, and assessment in relation to course and materials design. The answers to the questions at the level of course design influence your answers in relation to materials design, and create a golden thread or a story-line between course and materials design and development. Whether you are designing learning materials for delivery in campus-based courses or fully online off-campus courses, or something in between, the broad design issues are similar.
Before you look at the Course Design and Materials Development sections of the Guide (sections 2 and 3 respectively), you may wish to consider how Open Learning, Open Educational Resources (OER) and the Use of Technology to Support Teaching and Learning apply to both course and materials design and development. Additionally, we have grouped a selection of Essential Resources contained in this Guide that may be useful.
Policy Review and Development Toolkit
The purpose of this toolkit is to help users to identify some of the policy implications of a decision to harness Open Education Resources (OERs). It is designed to help users to review their own institutional policy environment and where necessary institute policy changes that will facilitate collaboration and the development and sharing of OERs.
This toolkit examines key critical issues that need to be addressed using actual and modified examples. The toolkit space also provides a platform for interaction between individuals and institutions in identifying policy challenges and finding appropriate solutions through an engagement with a community of practice.
