Differentiation in Access to, and the Use and Sharing of (Open) Educational Resources among Students and Lecturers at Technical and Comprehensive Ghanaian Universities (original) (raw)
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Open Praxis, 2017
In order to obtain a fair ‘OER picture’ for the Global South a large-scale study has been carried out for a series of countries, including Kenya. In this paper we report on the Kenya study, run at four universities that have been selected with randomly sampled students and lecturers. Empirical data have been generated by the use of a student and a lecturer questionnaire to which in total 798 students and 43 lecturers have responded. Selected from the very rich source two major outcomes are: (i) there is a significant digital differentiation among lecturers and students at urban versus rural universities in terms of their proficiency and internet accessibility; and (ii) the awareness and appreciation of the OER concept and open licensing is low but from the actual processing by respondents of educational resources (not necessarily open) a ‘preparedness for openness’ can be derived that promises well for the future.
2019
The academic literature on open educational resources (OER) and practices in higher education has grown substantially over the past decade. OER is seen to offer endless possibilities for Sub-Saharan African universities by reducing costs of education, improving quality of education, as well as increasing access to quality education for all, among others. Sub-Saharan African universities though, are notably underrepresented in the literature, especially on differentiations, be it on access to or use and sharing of OER. This thesis synthesizes research carried out to develop a representative view of OER in three Sub-Saharan countries: Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. The study, which formed part of the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project, explores differentiation in terms of (i) digital proficiency; (ii) level of use of OER; (iii) awareness of licensing; and (iv) the perceived value of OER. This thesis examines a deliberate selection of twelve univers...
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.
Open Educational Resources Utilization in Tanzanian Higher Learning Institutions
Technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning especially in Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs). Despite the observed countrywide ubiquitous use of internet, access to plenty of open educational resources (OER), several challenges on OER use are yet to be identified and clearly addressed. Necessary changes in the curriculum, teaching methods and institutional management procedures are required. While OER are designed as "learner centred", "teachercentred" method is predominant in Tanzania. Incompatibility between OER and the educational system may culminate into confusion among students, instructors and educators. The changing role of lecturers, tasked in forging parity between the OER and the situations in HLIs forms another challenge. The origin of OER used in Tanzanian HLIs probes on both their quality and utility. All these issues need to be addressed. This paper explores the teaching/learning system in the verge of vast utilization of the OER in Tanzania using meta-analysis that combines facts, data and findings from previous studies. It identifies the nature and character of teaching/learning process in Tanzanian HLIs, locates the OER use, uncovers challenges facing effective accommodation of OER; and highlights ing policy implication to Tanzania. The findings indicate high accessibility of OER to lecturers, students and educators in Tanzania, with the evident lack of national policies and guidelines on OER use. The education system is not in conformity with OER requirements in terms of both syllabi and pedagogy. Therefore major adjustments are recommended on the transformation of the educational system for countrywide sustainable OER utilization.
The past few years have seen increasingly rapid development and use of open educational resources (OER) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing countries. These resources are believed to be able to widen access, reduce the costs, and improve the quality of education. However, there exist several challenges that hinder the adoption and use of these resources. The majority of challenges mentioned in the literature do not have empirically grounded evidence and they assume Sub-Saharan countries face similar challenges. Nonetheless, despite commonalities that exist amongst these countries, there also exists considerable diversity, and they face different challenges. Accordingly, this study investigated the perceived barriers to the use of OER in 11 HEIs in Tanzania. The empirical data was generated through semi-structured interviews with a random sample of 92 instructors as well as a review of important documents. Findings revealed that lack of access to computers and the Internet, low Internet bandwidth, absence of policies, and lack of skills to create and/or use OER are the main barriers to the use of OER in HEIs in Tanzania. Contrary to findings elsewhere in Africa, the study revealed that lack of trust in others' resources, lack of interest in creating and/or using OER, and lack of time to find suitable materials were not considered to be barriers. These findings provide a new understanding of the barriers to the use of OER in HEIs and should therefore assist those who are involved in OER implementation to find mitigating strategies that will maximize their usage.
The paper examined awareness and use of Open Educational Resources by academic staff in Federal College of Education Technical Asaba, Delta State, Nigeria. Three research questions guided this study. The researchers adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised all 73 academic staff of Federal College of Education Technical, Asaba. No sampling was done as the entire population was used for the study. An online questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The questionnaire was validated by educational technology experts. Cronbach Alpha was used to establish the reliability of the instrument which yielded .71 on Awareness and .77 on Usage of OER. Data were analyzed with frequency count, simple percentages, and mean. The findings revealed that academic staff had a high level of awareness of the concept of open educational resources and a high level of utilization of the various types of OER. It was also established that poor electricity supply, poor internet connectivity, lack of library sensitization on the use of OER, and lack of access to computers/laptops were some of the challenges to the effective use of OER. Based on the findings, the researchers recommended among others that the school management should improve on electricity supply, provide adequate internet facilities for academic staff to fully utilize quality OER and that academic libraries and lecturers should also help in promoting the use of OER among the students.
University of Cape Town , 2015
A review of the literature confirms that Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives have created free, openly licenced and high quality educational resources for anyone to use. However, these free, openly licensed and high quality educational resources appear to remain largely unused by Africa University academics in the educationally resource-impoverished Zimbabwe. The objectives of this research study are to explore the challenges and enablers experienced by Africa University educators who may potentially adopt OER, and ascertain barriers preventing them from adopting OER in mainstream teaching. The sample consists of 45 full time educators from Africa University. Data was gathered by means of a survey questionnaire administered by the researcher. A modified version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model developed by Venkatesh et al. (2003) was used. The UTAUT model was created from a fusion of eight diffusion of innovation models, and this gave it conceptual superiority over other candidate models. Key findings indicate that the extent to which educators believe that using OER will help them to enhance their teaching performance (Performance Expectancy),the extent of perceived easiness associated with finding, customising, and using OER (Effort Expectancy) and the extent to which educators perceive how important the opinion of their peer educators if they adopt OER or not (Social Influence)have a statistically significant positive influence on the educators’ Behavioural Intention to adopt and use OER. The extent to which an individual is satisfied with the institutional framework, policies and technical infrastructure to support the use of the innovation (Facilitating Conditions) did not yield a statistically significant influence on the Behavioural Intention and this was interpreted to mean Africa University educators are satisfied with the current resources and infrastructure in place. However educators felt Institutional Support in the form of institutional OER supportive policies, official OER project enactment, and OER related incentives needed attention. Also, significant differences were found in the barriers which potential users of OER identified as either limiting to potential use of OER, or negatively affecting their intention to use OER. These barriers include open licensing knowledge; institutional support; follow up training sessions; relevance, reliability and adaptability of OER. Addressing these factors could lead to a more widespread adoption of OER, at Africa University and help address the prevalent educational resource challenge.
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.
Analysis of Open Educational Resources in east Africa
Presentation, 2021
OER is important in promoting quality education on the digital platform in line with the Sustainable Development Goals in education (UNESCO, 2019). The potential of OER's contribution to sharing knowledge around the globe to enhance efficiency in teaching and learning is huge. Therefore, it is prudent to look at its significance. This paper will focus on OER in East Africa, its strength and future implications, limitations and usage in teaching and learning in schools.
2018
In the current economically constrained environment Open Educational Resources (OER) have been heralded as a way of providing access to relevant and affordable educational resources to learners and educators in both formal and informal learning contexts, including higher education. OER are being created and shared through a range of OER initiatives, repositories and portals (e.g. MIT Open Courseware, OpenLearn, MERLOT, Khan Academy, OER Africa, OER@AVU). Although site statistics provided by these various portals indicate some access to these resources from countries in Africa, the number of 'hits' do not explain how these materials are being used, by whom and to what effect to provide empirical evidence for the "widely shared belief that [OER are] going to be a fundamentally important phenomenon for the future of learning and education" (Tuomi 2013:59) and on pedagogical practices in particular. This keynote address will explain how the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project is using desktop regional reviews, cross-regional surveys, cross regional and country case studies, action research studies and focused impact studies to establish in what ways, and under what circumstances the adoption of OER can impact upon a range of educational aspects. It will focus specifically on conceptual and methodological strategies adopted to tease out the relationship between OER and pedagogical practices in selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. OER as a response to some educational challenges in the Global South According to an article by e-Learning Africa News: There has been a huge amount of debate about the relevance of these kinds of resources in the developing world, particularly in Africa, a continent which is currently seeing rapid economic growth and technological innovation. Using open source materials in developing countries could potentially lead to a greater knowledge gap between the developed world and the developing world, with Africans becoming consumers of knowledge rather than producers. Because of the high cost involved in the creation of OERs, African countries with fewer resources may not have the means to create and distribute their own materials and resources. As the quality and quantity of OERs from the developed world continues to grow, African nations are more in danger of falling behind 2. OER definition Open Educational Resources can be briefly defined as "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and/or re-purposing by others" 3. OER: Degrees of Openness The most frequently used intellectual property rights mechanisms used to indicate the permissions for the creation and reuse of OER are Creative Commons licenses 4. These indicate the original authors' permissions for reuse (copying), revision (customisation, including translation), remixing (or combination with other materials) which allow for the legal redistribution, and retention of the original or adapted materials. OER initiatives globally and in Africa OER have been made available through a range of OER global initiatives, repositories and portals (e.g.