Social Responsibility
Making resources openly available offers an opportunity for knowledge to be shared widely so as to increase learning opportunities for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to undertake formal qualifications. They also add to provision of re-useable learning materials available to learners and educators all over the world.
Nottingham is collaborating with OER Africa and The UK National Commission for UNESCO (ISWG) on an initiative to source open resources produced by UK HEI for use in African education projects.
Open resources provided under a creative commons licence are available at no cost. In addition many of the resources made available include timetables, outlines, reading lists, essay questions, lecture notes, lecture slides, seminar discussion topics and assessment methodologies.
The potential for using these resources to support curriculum development and increase the availability of high quality teaching materials in a short time frame is great, and with the international OER movement growing all the time, the ramifications are far reaching.
In a presentation given at the University of Ghana Policy Workshop in February 2009, Catherine Ngugi (Director) and Neil Butcher (Strategist), outlined why OER Africa think open resources are potentially so powerful for education in Africa:
“Access, at low or no cost…to educational resources, allows educators to develop their skills and competences necessary to integrate these new resources into high quality learning programmes. The principle of allowing adaptation of materials also allows learners to be active participants in educational processes – they can now learn by doing and creating, not just by passively reading and absorbing. In short, OER has the potential to build capacity in African education systems, of both learners and educators.”
Find out more about OER Africa.