Browsing by Subject "Open Educational Resources"

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    Open Access
    Degrees of openness: the emergence of open educational resources at the University of Cape Town
    (University of the West Indies, 2009) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Gray, Eve
    Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide a range of opportunities to share educational materials and processes in ways that are not yet fully understood. In an extraordinary development, increasing numbers of traditional and distance universities are using ICTs to make a selection of their teaching resources freely available as 'open education resources' (OER). The University of Cape Town recently signed the Cape Town Open Education Declaration signalling some senior level support for the notion of OER. In anticipation of an institution-wide roll-out, lecturers and educational technologists at UCT are grappling with the issues that need to be addressed to meet this intent. This paper suggests that careful analysis of existing educational materials and processes is necessary to provide an indication of what can be done to make them more openly available beyond the confines of an individual teaching and learning space. However, the deceptively simple term “open” hides a reef of complexity. This paper endeavours to unravel the degrees of openness with respect to key attributes of OER, namely social, technical, legal and financial openness in an attempt to make the task of identifying where changes could be made to existing teaching materials or processes a little easier for the lecturer and the educational technologist alike. While acknowledging the potential value of content, we contend, however, that it is the opening up of educational processes, which we are calling Open Pedagogy (OP) enabled by the Web 2.0 technologies that are set to play the more transformational role in the collaboration between students and lecturers.
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    Open Access
    Explaining the relations between culture, structure and agency in lecturers' contribution and non-contribution to Open Educational Resources in a higher education institution
    (2016) Cox, Glenda; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Luckett, Kathy
    Despite the existence of many successful initiatives to promote the sharing and use of Open Educational Resources (OER), sharing and use of OER is not a widely accepted practice in higher education. The reasons for lecturers' choices on whether or not to contribute OER are poorly understood. This thesis develops a theoretically-based explanation of both why lecturers contribute and why they do not. The thesis addresses the question: How do the relations between culture, structure and agency influence lecturers' contribution and non-contribution of OER in a higher education institution? A mixed methods approach was used to gather quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews) data. Fourteen lecturers from the University of Cape Town (UCT) were interviewed (two from each of its seven faculties), seven who had contributed OER and seven who had not. The analysis adopted an Activity Theory framework to highlight the enablers and barriers to contribution present in the institutional system. The Social Realism of Margaret Archer (1995, 2003, 2007a, 2012) was used to explore the power of academics' agency and their internal conversations arising from their personal concerns in deciding on their courses of action. This study illustrates how capturing lecturers' internal conversations and analysing how they think about their social contexts is valuable not only in the context of OER but also as a way of understanding their role as social actors more generally. Analysing the relations between culture, structure and agency in institutions explains why some institutions are slow to change and/or prefer to maintain current practices. At UCT, where institutional culture allows academic freedom of choice and structure supports that choice, it is the academic agents themselves who hold the power of action to contribute or not to contribute OER. Academics have the power to change their practice if it makes sense in terms of their projects, the activities that they are involved in and their concerns. Thus in this context, the long term sustainability of the OER movement rests firmly on the willingness of individual lecturers to share and use OER. By understanding the institutional context in which the individual is placed, OER can be encouraged appropriately
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    Open Access
    Position Paper: Open Educational Resources
    (2015) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Cox, Glenda
    This document provides a brief overview of Open Educational Resources (OER) and recommendations for their adoption in higher education institutions set again the current trends internationally. The specific OER affordances are highlighted as well as their associated costs and particular cost reduction possibilities. OER adoptions in various contexts in South Africa are provided to showcase the initial benefits and challenges identified so far.