International Journal of Open Educational Resources
on social injustices by enabling equitability , inclusivity , accessibility , and participation . Can you share more on this focus ?
Mpine : My work in OEP / OER focused mainly on addressing the social injustices that hinders higher education to respond to their mission of producing graduates who will contribute meaningfully to the economic development and the much-desired social cohesion of South Africa ’ s nascent democracy . Societies look up to universities to address an array of problems such as those we are currently facing including persistent inequality , poverty , climate change , social cohesion , inclusive economic development , access to health , housing , water and other basic services . It is from this standpoint that I firmly believe higher education has a social justice mandate of enabling equitable access to quality education to all irrespective of who they are and where they are from . The principles of social justice are grounded on equitability , inclusivity , accessibility and participation with the aim of addressing the injustices that excluded many people from accessing higher education .
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Melissa : In terms of OEP / OER understanding and adoption , where do you believe we ( collectively , higher education ) stand and why ?
Mpine : The aim of open education is to provide an unprecedented opportunity to increase student access to higher education at a scale in a cost-effective way . Accomplishing this much needed goal amid rampant poverty requires that higher education institutions should lead the way by ensuring that education that is produced through public funds is made accessible to the community it serves . It is therefore important that Open Education is viewed beyond what it does to what it is meant to achieve . Despite well-meaning efforts and obvious benefits for using OEP / OER , many institutions of higher learning are reluctant to embrace these practices . Challenges confronting OEP and the use of OERs range from lack of empirical studies that focus on the pedagogies , theories and the impact of OEP / OER in addressing the social mandate of open education institutions such as Unisa . Although ODL institutions have been successful in enabling access to higher education , they have been weak in ensuring that students are effectively supported to succeed . Access without success is not an opportunity . This perception of poor throughput rates that is often associated with open and distance education has also polluted all other open education practices .
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Melissa : Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , higher education around the world has only just started to respond to the necessity to place courses online . As leaders in Open Distance Learning ( ODL ), Unisa has successfully adapted , endured , and survived these ever-evolving changes in higher education . For example , COVID forced nearly 1.6 billion South African children and youth to stay at home and has impacted student learning loss and increasing drop-out rates . Responding to these issues , you developed a pilot initiative using OER that enabled 300 school teachers to transition from faceto-face to online teaching and learn-
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