Browsing by Subject "educational challenges"

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    Open Access
    Research on Open Educational Resources for Development in the Global South: Project landscape
    (African Minds, International Development Research Centre & Research on Open Educational Resources for Development, 2017-12) Arinto, Patricia; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; King, Thomas; Cartmill, Tess; Willmers, Michelle
    The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project was proposed to investigate in what ways and under what circumstances the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) could address the increasing demand for accessible, relevant, high-quality and affordable education in the Global South. The project was originally intended to focus on post-secondary education, but the scope was expanded to include basic education teachers and government funding when it launched in 2013. In 2014, the research agenda was further expanded to include the potential impact of OER adoption and associated Open Educational Practices (OEP). ROER4D was funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Open Society Foundations (OFS), and built upon prior research undertaken by a previous IDRC-funded initiative, the PAN Asia Networking Distance and Open Resources Access (PANdora) project. This chapter presents the overall context in which the ROER4D project was located and investigated, drawing attention to the key challenges confronting education in the Global South and citing related studies on how OER can help to address these issues. It provides an abbreviated history of the project and a snapshot of the geographic location of the studies it comprises, the constituent research agendas, the methodologies adopted and the research-participant profile. It also provides an overview of the other 15 chapters in this volume and explains the peer review process.
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    Open Access
    The role of ICTs in higher education in South Africa: one strategy for addressing teaching and learning challenges
    (University of the West Indies, 2007) Jaffer, Shaheeda; Ng'ambi, Dick; Czerniewicz, Laura
    One of the most common problems of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education is to base choices on technological possibilities rather than educational needs. In developing countries where higher education is fraught with serious challenges at multiple levels, there is increasing pressure to ensure that technological possibilities are viewed in the context of educational needs. This paper argues that a central role of educational technology is to provide additional strategies that can be used to address the serious environmental and educational challenges faced by educators and students in higher education. The educational needs manifest in South African universities include addressing general lack of academic preparedness, multilingual needs in English medium settings, large class sizes and inadequate curriculum design. Using case studies from one higher educational institution, this paper shows how specific and carefully considered interventions using ICTs can be used to address these teaching and learning concerns. These examples serve to demonstrate some ways in which teaching and learning may be enhanced when uses of educational technology are driven by educational needs. The paper concludes that design of educational technology interventions should be driven by educational needs within the context of a broader teaching and learning strategy which requires buy-in of both educators and learners.