Open Teaching in a Digital Age: Becoming Global Scholars

OER at the University of Cape Town

eLearning Africa 2010Michael Paskevicius

OER: An Alternative Conception

• Open educational resources are the openly licensed and freely accessible teaching and learning resources created to support and enhance the process of teaching

• What if all resources created for teaching and learning at universities were made available by default as OER?

Why and why now?

Opportunities at UCT

• OER UCT Project – Audit of potential open materials – Creation of an OER directory– Advocacy and awareness

• Health OER– Focused on materials development

Result of Institutional Audit

• Many UCT academics already sharing

• Need to organize the already shared content from the university

• Sharing and growing the idea of ‘openness’

Software Development Process

• Relationship to Learning Management System (LMS)

• Software selection process

Professor Jean-Paul Van Belle

Matumo Ramafikeng

Strategy for Sustainability

• User able to manage own resources and profile

• ‘Pride of authorship’ model of OER publishing

• No separate business unit designated to clear content

• OER support will continue from the Centre for Educational Technology

Challenges and Lessons Learned

• Academics are sharing, but not always in an organized or optimized way

• Academics can lead the way in demonstrating how the internet can be used as a resource

• Teaching materials are generally undervalued

• Requires strategies to incorporate the production and sharing of OER as part of the universities ‘usual business’

• Digital teaching materials benefit from being ‘born-OER’

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Prepared by: Michael Paskevicius mike.vicious@gmail.com

OpenContent Directory: http://opencontent.uct.ac.zaOER UCT project blog: http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/oer-uct

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