Michelle Willmers | University of Cape Town (original) (raw)

Papers by Michelle Willmers

This case study draws from the experience of Associate Professor Maria Keet (Department of Comput... more This case study draws from the experience of Associate Professor Maria Keet (Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town/UCT, 2018) who wrote the first textbook in the new subfield of ontological engineering, “An Introduction to Ontology Engineering.” The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project is a research, advocacy and implementation initiative based in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at UCT. Aimed at Honours and early postgraduate students, the work identifies and demarcates ontology engineering; introduces its essential components; provides explainers, summaries of scientific papers, as well as interactive exercises

By developing content using various formats and methods, Juan Klopper has explored the use of onl... more By developing content using various formats and methods, Juan Klopper has explored the use of online platforms and social media for broadening access to knowledge, particularly as it relates to health care in South Africa. In February 2019, Juan received a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project to support the development of The Open Surgery Textbook, openly licensed and freely accessible online. Juan believed that the tiered and equal-partner design of the open textbook had the benefit of built-in quality assurance. However, he was unable to finish the project within DOT4D time constraints

Publication output from the 2007/2008 OpeningScholarship project which ran in the Centre for Educ... more Publication output from the 2007/2008 OpeningScholarship project which ran in the Centre for Educational Technology (CET) at the University of Cape Town. The main aim of this project was to explore the opportunities that information communication technologies and open dissemination models could offer for enhanced communication and more effective knowledge dissemination at UCT. These resources could be useful in strategic examination of how technology can be applied in higher education endeavour and case studies provide insight into particular UCT initiatives

The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning

One of the challenges experienced in South African higher education (HE) is a lack of access to a... more One of the challenges experienced in South African higher education (HE) is a lack of access to affordable, appropriate textbooks and other teaching materials that can be legally shared on online forums and the Internet. There are also increasing calls to address transformation and social justice globally and in South African HE through curriculum transformation. This article draws on the research of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development initiative at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It presents the journeys of four open textbook authors at UCT in relation to the social injustices they witness in their classrooms. It also makes use of Margaret Archer’s social realist approach to explore dynamics related to open textbook authors’ agency and ultimate concerns, as well as how their internal conversations shape their practices and approaches to open textbooks. Open textbooks are framed as a set of practices that play out in varying cycles of time and hold promise in terms of addr...

This interview schedule was developed in 2019 by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4... more This interview schedule was developed in 2019 by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town as part of its open textbook research process. The interview examines authors’ motivations for developing open textbooks, their envisioned content development plans in terms of authorship approach and student involvement, as well as approaches towards publishing, quality assurance, sustainability, copyright and licensing

Digital Open Textbooks for Development, Apr 1, 2021

At the University of Cape Town (UCT), an institution which is grappling with decolonisation and t... more At the University of Cape Town (UCT), an institution which is grappling with decolonisation and transformation of the curriculum, there is an array of imperatives which is driving academics to produce open textbooks – an activity which appears to be on the increase despite current challenges related to lack of institutional reward, pressures related to time constraints and the need for better articulated quality assurance mechanisms. In order to address the issue of institutional support for open textbook publishing, surface current models of open textbook production and contribute towards the development of a community of practice, the DOT4D project hosted the UCT Open Textbook Conversation event with academics, students and institutional managers with an interest in open textbook production

l'utilisation, la distribution et la reproduction sans restriction, pourvu que le mérite de la cr... more l'utilisation, la distribution et la reproduction sans restriction, pourvu que le mérite de la création originale soit adéquatement reconnu.

1 provides a range of activities, services and events that are open to the public. A creative opt... more 1 provides a range of activities, services and events that are open to the public. A creative option they use, called Stanford on iTunes U, provides access to a wide range of universityrelated audio content, including major events, speakers, faculty lectures and music. It allows a user to listen to podcast sound bites online or download them to their computer or iPod free of charge. HEIs" websites also often provide services such as campus maps, staff directories and tools for searching the website. A few even have a Really Simply Syndication (RSS) 2 feed, and specialised gateways for various groups such as prospective students, faculty, foundations and alumni. All this information is, however, primarily marketing-oriented and one-directional, flowing from the university to the general public.

James and his colleague Paul Egan received a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Developmen... more James and his colleague Paul Egan received a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project in order to undertake production and publication of the “Marketing to South African Consumers” open textbook. This paper details content development and design, and workflow of the project. In addition to having the textbook openly available online in multiple formats to boost accessibility, the author felt it was also important to have a print version. The final, published Marketing to South African Consumers textbook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence and priced very affordably

Jonathan Shock was awarded a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) projec... more Jonathan Shock was awarded a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project to develop a series of chapters for a first-year mathematics textbook “Introduction to University Level Mathematics for a South African Audience.” The first of these chapters, ‘Introduction to Complex Numbers’ (co-authored with Mashudu Mokhithi), was published in the OpenUCT repository in 2020. The aim was to develop an open access book at the University of Cape Town (UCT) which would be multiformat (online and print), inclusive (culturally and linguistically), and tailored for the South African school leaver. The paper provides details of this successful project

Open science has the potential to increase research efficiency, and maximise visibility and impac... more Open science has the potential to increase research efficiency, and maximise visibility and impacts of all forms of research outputs, while enabling greater engagement with the public. This workshop convened researchers in London to contribute to a conceptual framework for open science for development. A key aim was to begin a community for open science for development and this was reflected in questions and connections that were forged among participants, as well as suggestions for further contacts from within their networks

The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project is a research, implementation and advo... more The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project is a research, implementation and advocacy initiative at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. Findings show compelling evidence to suggest that open textbook development processes could address social injustice in higher education. Findings also demonstrate the efficacy of grant mechanisms to stimulate open textbook creation and reuse, and the need to scale activity to national levels in order to boost South African open textbook development that supports social justice efforts. The role of open educational tools and practices in education has been amplified in the COVID-19 context

Frontiers in Education

Growing inequity continues to manifest within and between higher education institutions, highligh... more Growing inequity continues to manifest within and between higher education institutions, highlighting the plight of the disadvantaged versus the advantaged. Against this backdrop, students’ ability to access quality textbooks and educational resources with locally relevant content presents a critical equity issue. Open textbooks provide opportunities to address social justice in the classroom. Highlighting the injustices which motivated authors in the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative at the University of Cape Town (UCT), this study uses Catherine Bovill’s framework of inclusion to examine the processes of 11 open textbook initiatives at UCT in terms of their degrees of inclusivity, with a focus on student participation. The authors draw on the work of political philosopher Nancy Fraser and her central norm of “parity of participation” in order to analyze the cases in terms of their ability to provide affirmative or transformative remedies to injustice. The d...

Tim Low’s Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) grant enabled him to start translating t... more Tim Low’s Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) grant enabled him to start translating the first-year IntroStat textbook from English into isiXhosa. As a senior lecturer at University of Cape Town, Tim advocates for greater inclusivity, localisation and multilingualism in the teaching of statistics at UCT. Enthusiasm for the project was sustained during 2019. However, activity during the normal academic term was not sustainable in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic adding to unpredictability. Two chapters were translated into isiXhosa and licensed in line with the ShareAlike principle. As the original English resource carries an open licence, no copyright issues were encountered

In most institutions, researchers will typically enter into a wide range of publishing relationsh... more In most institutions, researchers will typically enter into a wide range of publishing relationships with commercial and other publishing entities, depending on disciplinary dynamics, considerations around journal reach and impact, likelihood of acceptance, cost of publication, and other factors. It is important that researchers feel empowered to make independent decisions on what and where to publish, but institutional support is required to manage payment and other logistical issues entailed in the publishing process. Institutional support is also needed in the form of one or more "champions" to take a decisive lead on delivering change. Who pays? The changing role of the author and institution in scholarly communication practice One of the core underpinings of the contemporary open access publishing movement is public access to publicly funded research. is shift is premised largely on the assumption of SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION IN AFRICA PROGRAMME PAPER 2

The University of Cape Town (UCT) Press was established in 1994. The modern-day university press ... more The University of Cape Town (UCT) Press was established in 1994. The modern-day university press presents an interesting mix of challenges and conflicting agendas. The OpeningScholarship project chose UCT Press as a subject for case study in the hope that an examination of the operations and dynamics of such a press would throw some light on the tensions inherent in the academic publishing exercise. UCT Press is unique among South African university presses in that it is owned by a private company – namely, Juta and Company Ltd. Private ownership of a university press which enjoys a close, synergistic relationship with its parent institution is not unique in the global academic context, but it does present interesting challenges in terms of commercial and non-commercial entities working side by side, often with very different markers of success

All activity within the programme is framed by our methodological lens: Cultural Historical Activ... more All activity within the programme is framed by our methodological lens: Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). CHAT is a valuable tool in that it addresses our objective of trying to define the ecosystem of scholarly communication within our four partner institutions. We want to know: What are the historical trends and factors that have shaped current scholarly communication practice; and what impact are new research and communication technologies having on these ecosystems?

Research by higher education and communications scholars provides growing evidence of the changes... more Research by higher education and communications scholars provides growing evidence of the changes taking place in the field of scholarly communication, both as a result of changes in research activity in higher education systems globally (

The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning

Digital Open Textbooks for Development, Apr 1, 2021

Frontiers in Education

At the University of Cape Town open education and open scholarship activities and projects have t... more At the University of Cape Town open education and open scholarship activities and projects have taken place in several guises over the past seven years. They have been loosely connected, driven by champions and enabled by external grant funding. Open education practices and advocacy work has been firmly grounded in a collegial institutional culture, with the concomitant implications. The year 2014 saw the organic growth come together in an institutional commitment expressed in a Council-approved holistic open access policy, in the Launch of a repository curating both open education resources and research, and through a decision by the Library to provide a home for much of the work, partnered by the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching. The work has been accompanied by a commitment to researching practice, and has seen a number of studies completed, with a large scale research project on OERs across the global south underway. The open education agenda has been driven by a commitment to high quality education, by a belief in access to knowledge, by the hope for economies in the system, and through the Internet enabling the collaboration already woven into the academy to take a new networked and transparent form. Given its location, there has also been an acknowledgement of the need to make openly available locally developed teaching resources and research scholarly content from the global south. This bookchapter is a post-print. It is made available according to the terms of agreement between the author and the journal, and in accordance with UCT’s open access policy available: http://www.openuct.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/UCTOpenAccessPolicy.pdf for the purposes of research, teaching and private study.