Open Education 2017

The flow of research is often unidirectional, flowing from the global North to the global South (Kanwar, Kodhandaraman, & Umar, 2010) and to this, OER is no exception. It is argued that Š—“The African continent generates only 0.4% of global online content and this drops to 0.02% if South Africa is excludedŠ— (Gray, 2007, p. 35). The impression is that Afrika is largely absent in the OER discourse. Cases from South Africa are very common, however, for most of the other countries the questions is if OER movement non-existent in most of Afrika or if the activities occurring there are not being shared.

There are different entries through which one can enter the open education discourse. The three main gates are: 1) textbook affordability, 2) open pedagogy, 3) equity and 4) access. These conversations can be different by geographical areas, depending on the needs or priorities of the community. Little information exist on what gate(s) is used most in Afrikan countries. This is in large part because the voice from Afrika, either through Afrikan researchers themselves or researchers examining the phenomenon within Afrikan contexts are often missing. In this presentation we present two cases aimed at contributing Afrikan voices to the discourse on open education. Our presentation will be based on research in Namibia and Uganda, aimed at answering the following questions:

1. What does open education look like in Namibia and Uganda?

2. What are the values of openness from teachers in Namibia and Uganda?

3. What are the projects around open education taking place in Namibia and Uganda?



Our study uses a comparative and international education method (Asino, 2015), which is effective in conducting cross-cultural research. Through a combination of data from teachers and document analysis from the two countries, we aim to contribute a voice from Namibia and Uganda to the conference theme of Sharing, Gratitude, and Hope.

The difficulties of a village school in East Africa, which has no running water, few resources, and no internet access, add to existing impediments to teacher professional development. However, the innovations of OER and Content Access Point (CAP) provide opportunities for success in teacher professional development outcomes.



This presentation is a research-rich and human-captivating story of the partnership between people, technology, innovation, and educational passion. Pictures of dirt roads, bikes, and goats introduce the location of one of humanity's great struggles, educating children for a future with the limitations of today. The people behind the research have the real Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_value. The families and communities changed by the research have even greater value. This presentation will balance the discussion of research with the real application and outcomes of Open Education Resources (OER) on an educationally at-risk population in a context of extreme barriers to information, technology, and teacher professional development.



It is difficult to report the quantitative, non-parametric study using pre and post tests and analysis using the Mann-Whitney U without telling the stories of the faculty in an East African village school squatting in the Š—“bushŠ— accessing information from a passive satellite receiver or the story of the student running across a surrounded field to engage a pedagogically sound classroom experience. Therefore, we will tell both.

In the summer of 2016 I taught ENG 099: an English as a Second Language (ESL) Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) using Open Educational Resources for the third time. The first two times under 30 students registered and I taught live video lessons, but last year over 100 students from the Ivory Coast signed up. As a result I changed my approach to more of a self-serve model using Wikiversity as the course home. Each week I published Listening, Reading, Grammar, and/or Mechanics assignments on the course page with Writing and/or speaking homework to be submitted directly to me via e-mail. By the end of the six week course, seven students completed all the assignments and received certificates of completion. All three sequences of the course used only OER for the learning materials.



Following the course I collaboarted with another student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to analyze data from the course to understand what were the statistically signficant predictors of student success. Success here was measured as whether or not students finished all the assignments to complete the course. Using a multilevel Bayes Binary Probit Model we found that eagerness (defined as how quick they were to register), whether or not each week's lesson included specific vocabulary words to study, whether or not each week had optional work and the learning period (how much time passed since registartion opened [i.e., how long students had to study]) were the signifcant predictors of student success.



In my presentation I will detail how I created and administered the course as well as the results of the statistical analysis. It will be useful for:

* English as a Second Language teachers looking for examples of how to use OER in their classes,

* Educators hoping to run a MOOC on their own,

* Educators already running MOOCs wanting to learn what determines successful student completion, and

* Educators hoping to reach students in a developing country.

This presentation explores whether, why, and how Open Educational Practices and Resources (OEP&R) contribute to the social inclusion of underserved communities in the Global South by widening access to education, encouraging educational participation, and fostering empowerment of educators and learners. It does so by highlighting emerging insights from the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) in the Global South project. ROER4D research focuses on OEP&R activities in three regions: South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. It consists of 18 sub-projects with more than 100 participating researchers and research associates in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. The central question posed is: For whom and under what circumstances can engagement with Open educational Practices and Resources promote social inclusion?



The presentation adopts and develops a conceptual framework advanced by Gidley et al. (2010) which suggests that there are Š—“degreesŠ— of social inclusion characterised by notions of access, participation, and empowerment. This means that inclusion should not be understood as a simple binary yes/no outcome. They argue: Š—“Social inclusion can be understood as pertaining to a nested schema regarding degrees of inclusion. The narrowest interpretation pertains to the neoliberal notion of social inclusion as access; a broader interpretation regards the social justice idea of social inclusion as participation; whilst the widest interpretation involves the human potential lens of social inclusion as empowermentŠ— (Gidley et al., 2010). The framework is used to examine the types of social inclusion emergent in a selection of ROER4D studies and concludes that degrees of social inclusion are discernable in the OEP&R adopted by educators, and to a lesser extent by learners.

Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest and poorest countries. Yet the economy has been booming over the past decade, with annual economic growth around 10% in the past two years. With its goal to become a middle-income country, the Ethiopian government is investing heavily in higher education; from 20,000 students on two campuses in the late 1990s to more than 780,000 students on dozens of campuses today, higher education in Ethiopia is growing at a dizzying rate. With this growth, however, comes significant challenges, including accessing appropriate learning materials. The academic publishing industry in Ethiopia is small, and, with English the language of instruction in Ethiopian higher education, most textbooks are sourced from outside the country, from India, the UK, and the US, among other countries. However, due to a bureaucratic ordering process and prohibitive international shipping, academic libraries in Ethiopia routinely expect to wait two to three years for books to arrive. In this context, open educational resources seem an ideal solution. Yet, in Ethiopia as in many other less economically developed countries, infrastructure can be a significant barrier; in particular, internet bandwidth is limited and power outages common. The presenter spent the 2016-17 academic year in Ethiopia as a Fulbright Scholar, where she incorporated OER into her teaching, gave lectures to Ethiopian faculty on OER, and conducted research on the feasibility of OER in Ethiopian higher education. In her research, she asked this question: Are infrastructure limitations significant enough to off-set the potential usefulness of OER for higher education in East Africa? This presentation shares the results of that researchŠ—”including some surprising concerns of facultyŠ—”as well as the challenges and successes of implementing OER in Ethiopia, with implications for East Africa as well as developing countries around the world.

OERs have emerged as one of the key teaching-learning practices that have enhanced the quality of education. In 2008, Indian Government's National Knowledge Commission called for a Š—“National e-content and curriculum initiativeŠ— to enhance and promote OER creation and adoption. The National Mission on Education using ICT also stressed on creation of OER under the scheme. Since then India has undertaken several major projects through national level repositories that create content at every level of education, from primary to higher education. Despite the fact that the OER movement aimsξfor reducing time and cost of technology-enhanced learning environment, its accomplishment and sustainability rely on large-scale participation by educators. This demands consciousness and awareness about the concept of OER among educators and policy adoption of OER by institutions. Our earlier studies have shown that though several faculty of various Indian Universities possess a positive attitude towards OER and are willing to create, adapt and share their content; a larger percentage of educators and academicians often do not believe in sharing their knowledge. Various reasons, such as substantial lack of technical skills, minimal understanding of copyright and licensing, and lack of institutional policy have been recognised. We believe that with more ICT skills and knowledge of OER, the localised needs of academicians can be met which could assist in the promotion of OER. The present paper discusses these reasons along with the current status of OER in India. Various aspects, such as adoption of OER in India, the extent of awareness among educators about OER, various barriers and constraints faced by content creators in creating/adopting OER, the status of strategies adopted at the institutional level, will be discussed. We will also discuss means that could lead to successful implementation of OER and making OER mainstream in Indian higher education.

The flow of research is often unidirectional, flowing from the global North to the global South (Kanwar, Kodhandaraman, & Umar, 2010) and to this, OER is no exception. It is argued that Š—“The African continent generates only 0.4% of global online content and this drops to 0.02% if South Africa is excludedŠ— (Gray, 2007, p. 35). The impression is that Afrika is largely absent in the OER discourse. Cases from South Africa are very common, however, for most of the other countries the questions is if OER movement non-existent in most of Afrika or if the activities occurring there are not being shared.

There are different entries through which one can enter the open education discourse. The three main gates are: 1) textbook affordability, 2) open pedagogy, 3) equity and 4) access. These conversations can be different by geographical areas, depending on the needs or priorities of the community. Little information exist on what gate(s) is used most in Afrikan countries. This is in large part because the voice from Afrika, either through Afrikan researchers themselves or researchers examining the phenomenon within Afrikan contexts are often missing. In this presentation we present two cases aimed at contributing Afrikan voices to the discourse on open education. Our presentation will be based on research in Namibia and Uganda, aimed at answering the following questions:

1. What does open education look like in Namibia and Uganda?

2. What are the values of openness from teachers in Namibia and Uganda?

3. What are the projects around open education taking place in Namibia and Uganda?



Our study uses a comparative and international education method (Asino, 2015), which is effective in conducting cross-cultural research. Through a combination of data from teachers and document analysis from the two countries, we aim to contribute a voice from Namibia and Uganda to the conference theme of Sharing, Gratitude, and Hope.

The difficulties of a village school in East Africa, which has no running water, few resources, and no internet access, add to existing impediments to teacher professional development. However, the innovations of OER and Content Access Point (CAP) provide opportunities for success in teacher professional development outcomes.



This presentation is a research-rich and human-captivating story of the partnership between people, technology, innovation, and educational passion. Pictures of dirt roads, bikes, and goats introduce the location of one of humanity's great struggles, educating children for a future with the limitations of today. The people behind the research have the real Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_Î_value. The families and communities changed by the research have even greater value. This presentation will balance the discussion of research with the real application and outcomes of Open Education Resources (OER) on an educationally at-risk population in a context of extreme barriers to information, technology, and teacher professional development.



It is difficult to report the quantitative, non-parametric study using pre and post tests and analysis using the Mann-Whitney U without telling the stories of the faculty in an East African village school squatting in the Š—“bushŠ— accessing information from a passive satellite receiver or the story of the student running across a surrounded field to engage a pedagogically sound classroom experience. Therefore, we will tell both.

In the summer of 2016 I taught ENG 099: an English as a Second Language (ESL) Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) using Open Educational Resources for the third time. The first two times under 30 students registered and I taught live video lessons, but last year over 100 students from the Ivory Coast signed up. As a result I changed my approach to more of a self-serve model using Wikiversity as the course home. Each week I published Listening, Reading, Grammar, and/or Mechanics assignments on the course page with Writing and/or speaking homework to be submitted directly to me via e-mail. By the end of the six week course, seven students completed all the assignments and received certificates of completion. All three sequences of the course used only OER for the learning materials.



Following the course I collaboarted with another student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to analyze data from the course to understand what were the statistically signficant predictors of student success. Success here was measured as whether or not students finished all the assignments to complete the course. Using a multilevel Bayes Binary Probit Model we found that eagerness (defined as how quick they were to register), whether or not each week's lesson included specific vocabulary words to study, whether or not each week had optional work and the learning period (how much time passed since registartion opened [i.e., how long students had to study]) were the signifcant predictors of student success.



In my presentation I will detail how I created and administered the course as well as the results of the statistical analysis. It will be useful for:

* English as a Second Language teachers looking for examples of how to use OER in their classes,

* Educators hoping to run a MOOC on their own,

* Educators already running MOOCs wanting to learn what determines successful student completion, and

* Educators hoping to reach students in a developing country.

This presentation explores whether, why, and how Open Educational Practices and Resources (OEP&R) contribute to the social inclusion of underserved communities in the Global South by widening access to education, encouraging educational participation, and fostering empowerment of educators and learners. It does so by highlighting emerging insights from the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) in the Global South project. ROER4D research focuses on OEP&R activities in three regions: South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. It consists of 18 sub-projects with more than 100 participating researchers and research associates in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. The central question posed is: For whom and under what circumstances can engagement with Open educational Practices and Resources promote social inclusion?



The presentation adopts and develops a conceptual framework advanced by Gidley et al. (2010) which suggests that there are Š—“degreesŠ— of social inclusion characterised by notions of access, participation, and empowerment. This means that inclusion should not be understood as a simple binary yes/no outcome. They argue: Š—“Social inclusion can be understood as pertaining to a nested schema regarding degrees of inclusion. The narrowest interpretation pertains to the neoliberal notion of social inclusion as access; a broader interpretation regards the social justice idea of social inclusion as participation; whilst the widest interpretation involves the human potential lens of social inclusion as empowermentŠ— (Gidley et al., 2010). The framework is used to examine the types of social inclusion emergent in a selection of ROER4D studies and concludes that degrees of social inclusion are discernable in the OEP&R adopted by educators, and to a lesser extent by learners.

Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest and poorest countries. Yet the economy has been booming over the past decade, with annual economic growth around 10% in the past two years. With its goal to become a middle-income country, the Ethiopian government is investing heavily in higher education; from 20,000 students on two campuses in the late 1990s to more than 780,000 students on dozens of campuses today, higher education in Ethiopia is growing at a dizzying rate. With this growth, however, comes significant challenges, including accessing appropriate learning materials. The academic publishing industry in Ethiopia is small, and, with English the language of instruction in Ethiopian higher education, most textbooks are sourced from outside the country, from India, the UK, and the US, among other countries. However, due to a bureaucratic ordering process and prohibitive international shipping, academic libraries in Ethiopia routinely expect to wait two to three years for books to arrive. In this context, open educational resources seem an ideal solution. Yet, in Ethiopia as in many other less economically developed countries, infrastructure can be a significant barrier; in particular, internet bandwidth is limited and power outages common. The presenter spent the 2016-17 academic year in Ethiopia as a Fulbright Scholar, where she incorporated OER into her teaching, gave lectures to Ethiopian faculty on OER, and conducted research on the feasibility of OER in Ethiopian higher education. In her research, she asked this question: Are infrastructure limitations significant enough to off-set the potential usefulness of OER for higher education in East Africa? This presentation shares the results of that researchŠ—”including some surprising concerns of facultyŠ—”as well as the challenges and successes of implementing OER in Ethiopia, with implications for East Africa as well as developing countries around the world.

OERs have emerged as one of the key teaching-learning practices that have enhanced the quality of education. In 2008, Indian Government's National Knowledge Commission called for a Š—“National e-content and curriculum initiativeŠ— to enhance and promote OER creation and adoption. The National Mission on Education using ICT also stressed on creation of OER under the scheme. Since then India has undertaken several major projects through national level repositories that create content at every level of education, from primary to higher education. Despite the fact that the OER movement aimsξfor reducing time and cost of technology-enhanced learning environment, its accomplishment and sustainability rely on large-scale participation by educators. This demands consciousness and awareness about the concept of OER among educators and policy adoption of OER by institutions. Our earlier studies have shown that though several faculty of various Indian Universities possess a positive attitude towards OER and are willing to create, adapt and share their content; a larger percentage of educators and academicians often do not believe in sharing their knowledge. Various reasons, such as substantial lack of technical skills, minimal understanding of copyright and licensing, and lack of institutional policy have been recognised. We believe that with more ICT skills and knowledge of OER, the localised needs of academicians can be met which could assist in the promotion of OER. The present paper discusses these reasons along with the current status of OER in India. Various aspects, such as adoption of OER in India, the extent of awareness among educators about OER, various barriers and constraints faced by content creators in creating/adopting OER, the status of strategies adopted at the institutional level, will be discussed. We will also discuss means that could lead to successful implementation of OER and making OER mainstream in Indian higher education.

In April 2017 I will serve as a Fulbright Specialist on Open Education and Open Educational Resources at the University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. While I cannot say exactly what will happen, I can summarize my understanding of the context, my goals for the trip and hopes for its outcomes.

Nearly every indicator of education (literacy, enrollment, teacher wages, school building infrastructure, etc.) have declined in post-Soviet and newly democratic countries. Rigorous higher education is spoken about on administrative levels but remains out of reach for many students and most people. I hope in my short weeks at UCA to listen and serve well as outside expert, consultant, and advocate. Unlike the program I run here in the U.S. (because I didn't know any better) II hope to begin with open pedagogy as a foundational philosophy. Given the comparative lack of funds available and dearth of non-Soviet learning materials, I also anticipate training library staff and faculty regarding designing/building/attributing culturally relevant open course materials and in exploring tools for assessing campus-level opportunities for engagement in open educational practices.

In April 2017 I will serve as a Fulbright Specialist on Open Education and Open Educational Resources at the University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. While I cannot say exactly what will happen, I can summarize my understanding of the context, my goals for the trip and hopes for its outcomes.

Nearly every indicator of education (literacy, enrollment, teacher wages, school building infrastructure, etc.) have declined in post-Soviet and newly democratic countries. Rigorous higher education is spoken about on administrative levels but remains out of reach for many students and most people. I hope in my short weeks at UCA to listen and serve well as outside expert, consultant, and advocate. Unlike the program I run here in the U.S. (because I didn't know any better) II hope to begin with open pedagogy as a foundational philosophy. Given the comparative lack of funds available and dearth of non-Soviet learning materials, I also anticipate training library staff and faculty regarding designing/building/attributing culturally relevant open course materials and in exploring tools for assessing campus-level opportunities for engagement in open educational practices.