Open Educational Resources

How do we get teachers to integrate ICT effectively into teaching and learning, and into their other administrative duties? This presentation explores how to use the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (CFT) and the OER Commons repository of aligned OER to build teacher professional development courses.

This guide provides an introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) for students in post-secondary and higher education. It is aimed at helping you, as students, to explore the value of good quality OER, and provides an introduction on how to find and use OER. It intends to serve primarily as a source of reference for students in the Small States of the Commonwealth, but we hope it will be useful to students from any country.

This chapter considers both the role that Open Educational Resources (OER) can play in supporting school-level pedagogical transformation, and the policy approaches to initiate transformation in public school systems. Focusing on the context of Antigua & Barbuda, the chapter recognises that, for change to be effective, it needs to be driven at the systemic level, as this ultimately directs most public school systems’ operations.

In 2012, the World OER Congress was held in Paris, featuring presentations from key supporters of OER worldwide. The congress, which attracted over 400 participants (governments and educational and OER experts) from 70 countries, emphasised using OER as a means of providing equal access to knowledge. It showcased innovative policies and initiatives that demonstrate the potential of OER to improve communities. The congress also featured various ways in which OER serve as tools for collaboration and the creation of learning resources.

Collaboration between the Rwandan government, the University of Rwanda, and local industry to develop and deploy educator technology-integration professional development initiatives neatly follows the Triple Helix Model[1]. However, in this Rwandan initiative a fourth collaborative partner proved significant, the regional/global education community coordinated by UNESCO’s Regional Office for Eastern Africa.

NBA is currently adapting Current Open Learning Educational Resources to Produce Digital Teaching and Learning Resources (Courseware) for Mathematics and Science (Vocational) for the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). For this project, the DHET has selected to develop open and self-facilitated text-based materials for the National Certificate (Vocational) programmes in Mathematics and Physical Science at Levels 2 – 4.