Beyond the first steps: Sustaining Health OER Initiatives in Ghana (original) (raw)
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This chapter looks at the production and promotion of health open educational resources (OER) at the University of Ghana (UG) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Both institutions initially chose to produce materials from scratch rather than build upon existing OER, and then subsequently shared the materials through a global distribution network to advance health education across the continent. Their aim was to use OER to offset the challenges of an ever-increasing number of students, inadequate faculty size, insufficient funding for educational materials and equipment, limited physical and technical infrastructure, curriculum gaps and low research capacity. To create and publicly share educational materials, both universities undertook a number of activities to strengthen their professional, policy and technological infrastructures. Participants discussed the importance of clear copyright ownership and informed consent policies, the skills required to pr...
2013
The objective of the African Health OER Network project is to advance health education in Africa by creating and promoting free, openly licensed teaching materials created by African academics to share knowledge, address curriculum gaps, and support health education communities. The Network is a collaborative project between a university in the U.S., two universities in Ghana, two universities in South Africa, and an educational non-government organisation (pseudo-named Edu-NGO) based in South Africa.
Insights from the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project
Distance Education, 2011
Open educational resources (OER) are gaining ascendancy in education, particularly in higher education. Logic suggests that the potential benefits of OER are likely to be greatest in resource-poor contexts such as Africa. However, little is known about the feasibility and sustainability of their use in African institutions. In the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project, OER Africa and the University of Michigan collaborated with medical schools in Ghana and South Africa to help develop OER and tools for facilitating the integration of these into the existing curricula. The article draws upon data from the various evaluations of this project as a basis for generating understandings on initiating and sustaining OER in African contexts.
The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 2016
This paper shares analytical insights on the position, challenges and potential for promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) in African Open Distance and eLearning (ODeL) institutions. The researchers sought to use a participatory research approach as described by , in convening a sequence of two workshops at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) as a strategy for collecting data to obtain the aforementioned insight. The principal workshop objectives were to analyse the existing status of OER at the OUT and subsequently to share lessons learned in OER creation and production, integration and use, and hosting and dissemination. Other objectives were to discuss the rationale for an institutional OER policy and identify a suitable work-flow process for developing OER at the OUT. The workshop participants were purposively selected for their experience in co-developing OER materials with various outside organisations. The study included 28 representatives of the OUT academic units, and one facilitator from OER Africa. Research techniques used to collect data included a questionnaire, focused group discussions, presentations, and panel discussions. Results indicated that OUT staff were willing to engage with OER but had limited awareness, skills and competencies in the creation, integration and use of OER. The outcome of the study was the development of nine draft OER resolutions expressing needs that include the development of a comprehensive institutional OER policy related to existing institutional policies in order to guide, support and promote research and sustainable OER practice via holistic participation.
Electronic learning and open educational resources in the health sciences in Ghana
Ghana Medical Journal, 2011
To determine whether a group of Ghanaian students are able to easily use electronic learning material and whether they perceive this method of learning as acceptable. Setting: Participants: One hundred and fifty third year medical students at SMS and nineteen fifth year medical students at UGMS Methods: Two e-learning materials were developed, one on the polymerase chain reaction and the other on total abdominal hysterectomy and these were distributed to selected medical students. Two weeks after the distribution of the programmes, a one-page, self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the target groups of students at the two institutions. Results: Ninety three percent (139) of respondents at KNUST and 95% (18) at UG report having access to a computer for learning purposes. All of the UG students viewed the TAH programme; 82% (130) of the KNUST students viewed the PCR animations. All students who viewed the programmes at both institutions indicated that the e-learning pro-grammes were "more effective" in comparison to other methods of learning. Conclusion: Computer ownership or availability at both medical schools is sufficient to permit the distribution and viewing of e-learning materials by students and the medical students considered both programmes to be very helpful.
Distance Education Insights from the Health OER Inter- Institutional Project
2020
Open educational resources (OER) are gaining ascendancy in education, particularly in higher education. Logic suggests that the potential benefits of OER are likely to be greatest in resource-poor contexts such as Africa. However, little is known about the feasibility and sustainability of their use in African institutions. In the Health OER Inter-Institutional Project, OER Africa and the University of Michigan collaborated with medical schools in Ghana and South Africa to help develop OER and tools for facilitating the integration of these into the existing curricula. The article draws upon data from the various evaluations of this project as a basis for generating understandings on initiating and sustaining OER in African contexts.
Sustaining Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in Nigerian Universities
Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 2020
Open educational resources (OERs) have increased in popularity and are becoming an important method of providing access to, and enhancing, the teaching and learning experience for both lecturers and students. Despite their popularity, approaches that may work best for sustaining OER initiatives in Nigerian universities are still evolving in Library and Information Science (LIS) literature. Considering the current budget climate for higher education in Nigeria, a framework that is tended towards the sustainability of OER needs to be developed. This article examines opportunities and threats surrounding OER, as well as highlighting major players in the OER landscape. A mixed method approach consisting of a survey and focus groups was used to gather both qualitative and quantitative information from academics and librarians at selected universities in Nigeria, who participated in the Nigerian Universities Commission's (NUC) OER ranking exercise. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis respectively. While this paper provides recommendations based on findings on one hand, it also proffers suggestions for other libraries interested in growing OER initiatives focusing on development, implementation and assessment for universities operating with limited resources.
Awareness of Open Education Resources (OER) in Higher Learning Institutions
Sustainable ICT, Education and Learning, 2019
Open Educational Resources (OERs) has entered the world of academia and has inspired innovation in education since 1990s, yet OERs awareness in higher education (HE) remains very low in Tanzania. Educators in Higher learning institutions (HLIs) in Sub-Saharan Africa are striving to provide effective learning experiences to address the needs of university students in crowded classes with limited printed resources. OERs currently hold great promise for instructing university students because unlike traditional curriculum materials, OERs content can be copied, used, adapted, adopted and re-shared for free. This paper presents findings obtained from the baseline study conducted at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA) to explore the students' OERs awareness. In the academic year 2014/2015, 352 out of 713 first year undergraduate students (randomly sampled) from three campuses participated in the study. Online questionnaire survey was employed and the data were analyzed. We first show that there is a serious gap in OER knowledge followed by a number of structural and contextual barriers. We further revealed that more than 40% of students are not exposed to OERs offerings. Overall the data revealed that the use of OER at university is low, however, there is potential for growth of OERs as many students have mobile and are using ICT for education. Most participants cited limited access, limited connectivity, and affordability to be significant barriers to wider adoption of OERs. There were also concerns about the limited ICT infrastructure at SUZA and the need to build the capacity of academics on OER integration.
IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2012
Considerable effort has gone into Open Educational Resource (OER) initiatives in the past decade. These initiatives have created free, high quality educational resources for everyone and anyone to use. However, these open and free resources appear to remain largely unused by university academics on the educationally resource-poor African continent. The objectives of the research study are to explore the inhibitors and enablers are experienced by academics that use OER, and what barriers prevent academics from using OER. The sample consists of academics from East, West and Southern Africa. Information was gathered by means of a survey questionnaire. A modified version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model was used to identify the influence of certain factors on a user's intention to adopt OER. Some of the key findings indicate that Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy have a positive effect on a user's Behavioural Intention to use OER, and the latter has a strong influence on the Actual Use of OER. Facilitating Conditions do not have a statistically significant impact. Additionally, significant differences were found in the barriers which users and potential users of OER have identified as either limiting their current use of OER, or negatively affecting their intention to use OER.
Mainstreaming use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in an African context
Open Praxis
The study derives from a multi-year project implemented by OER Africa. The project sought to understand how OER might be used as a catalyst for pedagogical transformation in African universities. Within a non-determinist and interpretivist theoretical framework and an over-arching project methodology of participatory action research, the study made use of an analytical autoethnographic approach to capture and analyse data and to make recommendations. The approach was informed primarily by hermeneutics and systems thinking and involved multiple in-country engagements and the triangulation of information derived from document review, observation and iterative focus group discussions and individual interviews. The key finding of this study is the suggestion that engagement with OER is unlikely to move from being an individual to an institutional focus unless such engagement is aligned with the overall vision, mission and business model of the university.