Background & Rationale

An Open Educational Resources (OER) Collaboration to Improve Graduate Education at Agricultural Universities in Africa DRAFT/Working Document – Background & Rationale Working Title: OER Collaboration in African Agricultural Education

Foundation Narrative - Outline

Introduction

Introduce major themes and connections between Open Educational Resources content and process and the potential for leveraging and growing knowledge, the development of social capital, improvement of education, and the potential of connection university education with practice.

Background & Context of Open Educational Resources

• What
  • Definitions
  • History of OER
  • Major Activities & Initiatives
• Why
  • Localization / Relevance
  • Cost Reduction
  • Access
  • Improved Quality

Current State of Open Educational Resources

• Broad Overview of OER Related Projects
  • Brief Descriptions of Major Projects/Activities
    • Open CourseWare Consortium
    • OER Commons
    • Connexions
    • WikiEducator
    • CC Learn (Creative Commons more generally)
    • OpenLearn
    • EduCommons & COSL
    • Etc.
  • Inventory of CourseWare Assets
    • General
    • Ag Specific
    • Current Licenses
• Africa Specific
  • OER Africa
  • African Virtual University
    • http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories/African_Virtual_University
  • University of the Western Cape
    • http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories/Free_Courseware_Project%2C_UWC

• Impact & Use
  • Virtual High School of Utah
  • University of the People http://www.uopeople.com/
  • Peer to Peer University
  • CORE
  • Tecnológico de Monterrey
    • http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_stories:_Knowledge_Hub
  • Educause?
  • Otago Polytechnic
  • FlatWorld Knowledge
  • etc.

Catalysts, Enablers, and Future Directions

• Sustainability & Scalability
  • Interoperability
    • Licensing
    • Community Building
    • Open Standards
    • Open File Formats
    • OSS Infrastructure
  • Policy and Legislation
    • CapeTown Declaration
    • UK CIO Council
  • Commercial Use
  • Ecosystem
    • Cycle of creation, acquisition, use, derivation, reuse, and re-contribution
    • Students as active participants
    • Researchers as active participants
    • Teachers as active participants
    • Practitioners as active participants

• Who is Supporting OER
  • Hewlett
    • http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/OER/
  • MIT
  • Commonwealth of Learning
  • UNESCO

­Conclusion

Highlighting major points in the background document and relating them to the objectives of the overall project and the various initiatives.

Resources

Reuse

http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2009/02/05/estimating-reuse-remix-value-of-7-oer-projects/

Sustainability

http://www.slideshare.net/DolorsCapdet/oers-models-of-sustainability-1081945

Questions to be Thinking About

• The unique capability that you bring to the collaboration.
• Potential synergies with other efforts in the collaboration.
• How you will achieve the primary objectives using OER.
• How you will measure success - quantitative and qualitative metrics.
• How your effort is driven by the demands/needs of African universities and faculty.
• In what ways you are working directly with constituents (faculty, farmers, stakeholders, etc.).
• How you will demonstrate replicability and scalability of your efforts.
• How you will demonstrate the sustainability of your efforts.
• How you will demonstrate building social capital.
• How you will demonstrate unintended positive impacts.