Open Education Resources: Innovation for Development

International Perspectives on
Technology-Enhanced Learning
OER: Innovation for
Development?
Professor Asha Kanwar & Dr. K. Balasubramanian
Commonwealth of Learning
UBC, 13 July, 2013

Plan
 Context
 OER as an innovation
 Are OER addressing some of the challenges?
 Strategies to harness OER4D
 The COL Approach

COL Vision
Intergovernmental Organization
1987 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), Vancouver, Canada
Created by the Heads of
Commonwealth at CHOGM 1987
© Commonwealth Secretariat

WHAT IS IT FOR?
To help Commonwealth governments
and institutions use various
technologies to improve and expand
learning for development
Access to Learning
is the Key to Development

Commonwealth
 60% of the population
under 25
 1/3 of the world’s poor, 2/3
of them are women (ODI, 2009)
 23.3 million primary age
children out of school
 460 million illiterate adults

Education for All
(The Dakar Goals)
Peace
Democracy
Equality
Good governance

Development
Challenges
Development
Challenges
 Universal Primary
Education
 Gender Equality
 Health
 Poverty
 Universal Primary
Education
 Gender Equality
 Health
 Poverty
PHOTO: David Walker, PNG

CW Countries off track to
achieve MDGs
 MDG 1: poverty reduction: 14 (6 on track for 2020)
 MDG 2: universal primary education: 7 (12 on track for
2020)
 MDG 3: gender equality: 3 (4 on track for 2020)
Source:
– World bank MDG dataset (Last updated in April 2013):
http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/millennium-
development-indicators

400 million children (12-17) out of secondary school

70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
Access to Higher Education
Sub-
Saharan
Africa 10%
South Asia
15%
OECD
Average
40-50%
HIGHER EDUCATION
Caribbean
25%

Source: The Economist Dec 1st – 7th, 2012, Higher education, Not what it used to be.

Can technology help?
 Distance learning
 Online learning
 OER

‘…the lack of content …[is] the
major barrier[s] that
governments need to tackle….’
The world telecommunications/ICT Development report,
ITU, 2010

Open Educational Resources (OER)
OER are teaching, learning and
research materials in any medium
that reside in the public domain or
have been released under an open
license that permits their free use
and in some instances, re-purposing
by others
Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007

Why OER?
 Reduces costs
 Enhance access
 Improve quality

Can OER reduce Costs?
 20 teacher education programmes in
12 countries
 Materials available in 4 languages
 In 2010, 320,000 teachers benefited

$$
$
$
OER and Textbooks
Brazil: for 75% of students at
University of São Paulo, the cost of
acquiring books was higher than the
family’s monthly income.
Research Group for Public Policies for Access to Information,
qtd in Butcher & Hoosen, Business Case for OER, COL:
Vancouver, 2012, p. 17

OERU
 University of
Southern Queensland
 Otago Polytechnic
 Athabasca University

The OER university concept. Adapted from Taylor (2007)
James
Taylor

Access: Malawi
 Bunda College of Agriculture
 102 page Communications Skills textbook
 75% OER
 Adapted by adding contextually relevant
materials, activities, assignments

Access: translation
CORE
COL ID template
translated and adapted by
Open University of China
COL materials
in Ukrainian

Can OER contribute to Quality?
 611 institutions in India
– KSS Women’s Engineering College, Andhra Pradesh
– Maya Devi Educational Foundation, Uttarakhand
– Bhilai Institute of Technology, Chattisgarh

CAN OER ADDRESS
DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES?

What of Social
Dimensions?
OER cannot be viewed
only from the economic
and financial perspective

The Digital Divide (Commonwealth countries)
Source: Latest data from International Telecommunications Union Database
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ICTEYE/Reporting/DynamicReportWizard.aspx
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Africa Asia Caribbean Europe North America Pacific
Proportion of households with Internet access Proportion of households with Computer access

the network society….
is a major source of
the structuration of
power relationships.
Manuel Castells

Divides
Knowledge
Prosperity
Inclusion Geography
Race
Gender
Economic
Disability
Digital Divide

Social Exclusion of Education in
India: By Caste and Gender
http://elibrary.worldbank.org/docserver/download/4562.pdf?expires=1372886270&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=361D2E69B7AECC03686D
0FE1AFEEB730

OER by itself will not
be able to address
inequality

Justin Reich in https://edutechdebate.org/oer-and-digital-divide/open-educational-resources-expand-educational-
inequalities/
Open Educational Resources Expand
Educational Inequalities

Open Educational Resources Expand
Educational Inequalities
 … teachers working in schools serving low
income students simply can't make as much
use of…. the technology ….. because they
lack the planning time, broadband access,
etc. In this model, schools with greater
fiscal and human resources have more
capacity to take advantage of even free and
open resources.
Justin Reich in https://edutechdebate.org/oer-and-digital-divide/open-educational-resources-expand-educational-
inequalities/

Teachers who come to rural
schools, hungry
 Zambia: 57%
 Sierra Leone: 100%
 Ghana: 36%
 Lesotho: 59%
 India: 12%
Source: Bennell and Akyeampong (2007)
DFID

Being a Woman Teacher in Nepal
Social Exclusion of Women Teachers at
the Entry Level
Factors of Social Exclusion
Non-Local
Dalit woman
Disabled Woman
Unmarried
Source: Laxmi Paudyal, 2012
http://www.socialinclusion.org.np/new/files/Laxmi%20Paudyal_1365492827dWdb.pdf

Education in many countries
 Based on centralised systems with limited
academic freedom
 Poor governance
 Teachers as stakeholders have limited voice
 Lack of stakeholder involvement
 Minimal dialogues

44% of the countries have low level
of freedom and 33% moderate
freedom in managing non-
governmental schools.

Can Open Educational Resources
thrive in closed educational settings?

Strategies should
address both economic
and social issues

Process-oriented approach
“Opening educational resources is
an action that will cause
education to move to a new
place”. (Breck, 2007:3).
and not just as a product

Phases Characteristics
1 Appropriation ability of every stakeholder to have access to the
tools of OER. This would not only include the
availability of infrastructure, but also the social
access to every stakeholder irrespective of class,
gender and ethnicity
2 Localization reflects the meaning, position and physical space
given to OERs vis-à-vis social, political and cultural
values.
3 Incorporation Every stakeholder should have the ability to interact
with OER and use them for strengthening the
educational goals of the community.
4 Conversion The stakeholder is encouraged to look beyond the
community and enter into a relationship with the
global community. In addition, the stakeholder is
also influencing the structure and functions of
OER.
Domestication of OER

Localisation: principles
 Involve locals
 A community of practice bolsters localisation
 Must be done in appropriate formats
 Understand local contexts
http://gradworks.umi.com/3450142.pdf
Localization of Open Educational Resources
(OER) in Nepal: Strategies of Himalayan
Knowledge-Workers
Tiffany Zenith Ivins
March 2011

Emphasis on Governance
People have a say in the development
of these ideas and meanings because
they are able to participate in their
creation, growth, and spread.

 Participatory approach
 Decentralised organisational structures
 Learner centricity

Re-defining OER
 The phenomenon of OER/OLR is an
empowerment process, facilitated by
technology in which various types of
stakeholders are able to interact,
collaborate, create and use materials and
pedagogic practices, that are freely
available, for enhancing access, reducing
costs and improving the quality of education
and learning at all levels.

From ‘divide’ to ‘dividend’
 emphasis on people, rather than on
technologies
 knowledge as a social product emerging as an
interface of machine, individual, society
 learning as a process of knowledge creation

Paris Declaration on OER
Advocacy
Capacity
Policy
Research
Photo:CC-BYDavideStorti
The 2012 Paris OER
Declaration drafting group at
UNESCO Headquarters,
Paris, France

OER : open schooling
Schools Teachers Consultants
Ministries
of Education
Frances Ferreira

Teacher Education
Global Demand for Teachers: 1.7 million
 strengthening teacher education through the use of
technology and distance learning.
 350,000 teachers and teacher educators trained in
24 countries.
 reaching teachers in marginalised groups including
nomadic communities
Dr. Abdurrahman Umar
Education for All
(The Dakar Goals)

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth
Disaster management
Sustainable agriculture
Business &
Entrepreneurship
John Lesperance

Technical & Vocational
Skills Development
Impact – 150% increase in income
Alison Mead
Richardson
TVET
Institutions
TVET
Teachers
TVET
Students
Outcomes

The COL Approach
 Encourages participation and wider
stakeholder engagement
 Uses a range of appropriate technologies
 Takes a holistic approach

How can technology-enhanced
learning
 reach the digitally deprived and socially
excluded?
 transform closed educational systems?
 accelerate progress towards achieving
development goals such as MDGs and EFAs?

Open Education Resources: Innovation for Development

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