The Best of Two Open Worlds at the National Open University of Nigeria

Abstract

It will be wise for educational institutions, from primary to tertiary level, globally, to reflect on their position and profile with respect to the new concepts of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Responses will be diverse of course but the potential is so manifest that many institutions probably will consider the benefits to outweigh the barriers. The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has decided to combine its 'classical' openness with the new digital openness by fully embracing the OER approach and converting its complete course base into OER.Step-by-step, NOUN is currently implementing its strategy towards becoming an OER-based Open University with a special niche for MOOCs. During a launch event in December 2015, the first 40 OER-based courses were presented as well as the first 3 OERbased MOOCs. This paper therefore presents NOUN's OER strategy with insight on lessons learned. To the authors' knowledge NOUN is the first Open University in the world with such a full-fledged OER (& MOOCs) implementation route.

The Potentiality of MOOCs as a Tool for Widening Access to Higher Education in the African Context: A Systematic Review

“…There is a need for HEIs to initiate dialogue with governments and accreditation bodies in African countries on how MOOCs can be utilised innovatively, perhaps as part of the recognition of prior learning (RPL), to help millions of learners gain access to further training in the form of university education. University leadership also needs to encourage staff to teach actively with open content (Agbu, 2016;Czerniewicz et al, 2017), including MOOCs. Active and constructive discussions around this topic and sharing relevant knowledge and innovations could help to widen access to higher education using MOOCs.…”

“…This theme looks at how African HEIs view the value and role of MOOCs in increasing access to higher education for the masses that cannot access it, for whatever reasons, as reported in research. Of the 15 reviewed papers in this research study, only two studies by Agbu et al (2016) and Oyo and Kalema (2014) reported on the potentiality of MOOCs' being used for access to higher education. Oyo and Kalema (2014, p. 2) firmly believe that "a good design of MOOCs could widen HE access to disadvantaged students in Africa, thereby promoting holistic economic emancipation".…”

“…This finding is supported by the included study of El Said (2017), who reported that the population of Egypt appeared to be underrepresented and under-researched with respect to MOOC participation. Most articles in the MOOC research, as indicated in table 3, reported on topics such as the flexibility of MOOCs, student engagement, self-regulated learning and drop-out rates, except for the study of Oyo and Kalema (2014) and Agbu, Mulder, DeVries, Tenebe and Caine (2016), who discussed the possibility of MOOCs as tools to increase access to higher education. The next section presents the emerging themes based on the research questions from the studies included in the systematic review.…”

“…Statistics show that every year millions of young people who pass mandatory schoolleaving examinations in African schools cannot be placed at universities. In Nigeria, for example, about 400 000 students out of 1.4 million who passed the mandatory Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination in 2016 could not be placed in any Nigerian universities (Agbu, 2016). According to the Southern African Association for Institutional Research (SAAIR) (2019), out of a total of 661 116 pupils who wrote matric examinations in 2017 in public schools in South Africa, only 314 943 matriculants qualified for tertiary education, with 273 313 qualifying students aged between 18 and 29 years not being placed in universities.…”

Updating Open Development: Open Practices in Inclusive Development

“…For example, HarassMap, an online crowdsourcing platform that collects incidents of sexual The three open processes, with their associated practices and key characteristics. (Agbu et al 2016).…”