Tracking the Money for Open Educational Resources in South African basic Education: What We Don’t Know

Goodier, Sarah

doi:10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.2990

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Open textbooks have spread to other countries both in their original forms as open content and through dedicated initiatives, particularly in the Global South where efficiency savings can be particularly attractive (e.g. Siyavula, n.d.; Pitt, 2015;Goodier, 2017). The UK has many similar-ities with the American and Canadian markets, but also some factors which make it quite unique.…”

Section: Open Science and Open Textbooksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open Textbooks as an innovation route for open science pedagogy

Farrow¹,

Pitt²,

Weller³

2020

EFI

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The paper introduces the UK Open Textbook project and discusses its success factors with regards to promoting open practice and open pedagogy. Textbooks remain a core part of educational provision in science. Open Textbooks are openly licensed academic textbooks, wherein the digital version is available freely, and the print version at reduced cost. They are a form of Open Educational Resource (OER). In recent years a number of openly-licensed textbooks have demonstrated high impact in countries including the USA, Canada and South Africa. The UK Open Textbooks project piloted several established approaches to the use and promotion open textbooks (focusing on STEM subjects) in a UK context between 2017 and 2018. The project had two main aims: to promote the adoption of open textbooks in the UK; and to investigate the transferability of the successful models of adoption that have emerged in North America. Through a number of workshops at a range of higher education institutions and targeted promotion at specific education conferences, the project successfully raised the profile of open textbooks within the UK. Several case studies report existing examples of open textbook use in UK science were recorded. There was considerable interest and appetite for open textbooks amongst UK academics. This was partly related to cost savings for students, but more significant factors were the freedom to adapt and develop textbooks and OER. This is consistent with a range of research that has taken place in other countries and suggests the potential for impact on UK science education is high.

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Section: Open Science and Open Textbooksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open Textbooks as an innovation route for open science pedagogy

Farrow¹,

Pitt²,

Weller³

2020

EFI

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“…While some OER are available in print, such as open textbooks (Goodier 2017), the majority are available via online platforms. These include those of the Khan Academy, used in a study in Chile (Westermann Juárez and Venegas Muggli 2017); Coursera and FutureLearn, used in a study in South Africa (Czerniewicz et al 2017); and institutionalor government-supported repositories, such as Karnataka Open Educational Resources (KOER), used and extended in a study by Kasinathan and Ranganathan (2017).…”

Section: Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Open Educational Resources and Practices in the Global South: Degrees of Social Inclusion

Trotter¹,

Hodgkinson-Williams²

2020

Making Open Development Inclusive

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Across the Global South, educational institutions are under pressure to provide students with equitable access to affordable and good-quality education in economically constrained environments. The demand for equity of access to affordable and appropriate educational materials is felt in these countries that face growing student numbers, decreasing government funding, increasing textbook costs, and lack of locally relevant educational resources.The rapid growth and broad deployment of digital technologies have provided educators and students with platforms for locating, creating, sharing, and using educational materials at an unprecedented scale. This is a development that many (e.g., Daniel, Kanwar, and Uvalić-Trumbić 2009; Smith and Casserly 2006) have hoped would expand equity of access for those from resource-constrained environments. However, not all the educational materials located on the Internet are legally adaptable or shareable.Moreover, even if learners and educators have access to materials on the Internet, whether openly licensed or not, the content may not be suitable for their needs or it may lack relevance because it is based on worldviews or contexts that do not speak meaningfully to their own. Engaging with open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), which entails creating materials, sharing them on public platforms, reusing the original materials verbatim, customizing them, combining them with other materials, and sharing these publicly, has been advocated as a way of reaching groups that are socioeconomically, geographically, linguistically, and epistemically marginalized. In many parts of the world, educators in schools, higher-education institutions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are starting to collaboratively create educational materials with the intention of sharing these freely with other educators and students.These OEP include activities such as collaboration among educators, cocreation among

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“…While government records are not totally clear, it seems that around 10 million books were printed and distributed to schools nationally (Goodier, 2017 Having succeeded to get Grade 10 ie High School maths and science texts printed and distributed to schools, Siyavula next authored the Grade 11 books to the new curriculum standard and expanded their publishing formats for access via mobile devices which are more commonly used that laptops in South Africa.…”

Section: : First Free Textbooks Printed and Distributed Saving Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study also probes for student uptake, impact and outcomes. It therefore offers a new perspective as well as a more comprehensive case write up than the few existing publications which look at early evaluations (Siyavula: Building Communities to Support Teacher Use, Localization and Sharing of OER, 2009), publication costs (Goodier, 2017), business models (Stacey, 2017), and teacher perceptions and usage (Pitt & Beckett, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Siyavula Case: Digital, Collaborative Text-Book Authoring to Address Educational Disadvantage and Resource Shortage in South African Schools

Lambert

2019

iejee

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Siyavula is known as a pioneer developer of high-quality free digital maths and science textbooks to address resource gaps and disadvantage in South African schools. This case study identifies the success factors which could be replicated in other contexts. Siyavula has developed expertise in digital developing, editing and improving maths and science workbooks and teachers' guides and distributing them in multiple digital and mobile formats for free. In 2013 the government took the free texts and sponsored the printing and distribution of c500K copies of Grade 4-6 titles, saving the government approximately USD$83.5 Million for each of the 12 books (student workbook and teacher guide in both English and Afrikaans). The collaborative authoring system is identified as instrumental to the success of the project to address under-resourced schools, through a combination of personal (attitudinal), technical (online systems) and social resources (volunteers and stakeholders). Siyavula leaves a legacy of multi-stakeholder volunteer text-books sprints where an intense face-to-face experience provides the ground-work for constructive online authoring inclusive of diverse stakeholder input across different roles and ranks. Collaborative authoring advances curriculum and pedagogy sharing, expertise and capacity building. Collaborative authoring systems are found to have potential in many under-resourced school contexts not only for school texts, but also for early reading, multi-lingual and culturally appropriate book adaptations.

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Tracking the Money for Open Educational Resources in South African basic Education: What We Don’t Know

Cited by 11 publications

References 8 publications

Open Textbooks as an innovation route for open science pedagogy

Open Textbooks as an innovation route for open science pedagogy

Open Educational Resources and Practices in the Global South: Degrees of Social Inclusion

The Siyavula Case: Digital, Collaborative Text-Book Authoring to Address Educational Disadvantage and Resource Shortage in South African Schools

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