Introduction
The potential of Open Educational Resources (OER) has gained increasing prominence over the past few years. A myriad of OER projects and interventions has and is being implemented in a range of contexts. In a nutshell, the concept of OER describes educational resources that are freely available for use by educators and learners, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees. A broad spectrum of licensing frameworks is emerging to govern how OER are licensed for use, some of which simply allow copying, while others make provision for users to adapt the resources that they use.
The concept of OER is potentially powerful for various reasons, including:
- Because OER removes restrictions around copying resources, they hold potential for reducing the cost of accessing educational materials.
- The principle of allowing adaptation of materials contributes to enabling learners to be active participants in educational processes, whereby they learn by doing and creating, not merely by passively reading and absorbing.
- OER has the potential to build capacity in African countries by providing educators with access, at low or no cost, to the means of production to develop their competence in producing educational materials and completing the necessary instructional design to integrate such materials into high quality programs of learning.
OER Africa believes the potential of OER is best achieved through a collaborative partnership of people working in communities of practice (CoPs). We have established OER Africa in the firm belief that OER has a tremendously powerful positive role to play in developing and capacitating higher education (HE) systems and higher education institutions (HEIs) across Africa. Our conviction is matched by our concern that – if the concept and practice of OER evolves predominantly outside and for Africa – we will not be able to liberate its potential. Thus, OER Africa has been set up to ensure that Africans harness the power for Africans through building collaborative networks across the continent.
In this position paper we explain the concept of OER in greater detail and explain why, and under what conditions, we believe OER holds such potential for HE in Africa.
