3 Questions for an OER Leader | Featuring Professor Mpine Makoe
ing . Please share with our readers more about this initiative .
Mpine : My role as a CoL chair and as an OER ambassador for the International Council for Distance Education ( ICDE ) is to promote OEP / OER by focusing particularly on the social justice mandate of higher education ; influence policies by ensuring that OEP / OER are part of the national discourse ; thrash out professional development programmes in the creation , adaptation and use of OERs ; develop and undertake collaborative research project on OEPs / OER . The rational for promoting open education-based model has proved to be efficient in expanding access into higher education by providing educational content at no or low costs . When Covid-19 pandemic hit the world , many institutions had to move very quickly to an online space , mostly in a haphazard way as the pandemic caught many people unaware . Many teachers who were already teaching in the field were expected to move their classroom to an online environment seamlessly despite their little or total lack of capacity to teach online . To address the challenge of capacitating educators at a scale and in a very short time , my colleagues and I designed a programme on equipping in-service teachers with the necessary skills they need to teach online . Since there was no time to properly design an online course , we used OER to assist teachers to develop a working understanding of teaching online . To support participants in navigating the online space , WhatsApp was selected because it is a familiar social network platform that is user-friendly , easily accessible and generally available on mobile phones . WhatsApp was used by students to readily share and help each other as they go through the OER , while academics connected with WhatsApp groups daily to gauge learning , pose or answer questions , and provide an overall level of support to maintain , motivate and connect with students . This OER based course reached more than 600 participants in three months , others went as far as completing the course and receiving badges .
Open education practices and models have thus far proved to be efficient in expanding access into higher education . The success of open education is dependent upon systematic approaches to planning and managing the implementation of these practices . It requires flexible structures that enable access to as many people as possible using a variety of routes that are both formal and non-formal , conventional and unconventional . The increased digitalisation of education and the impact of Covid-19 will lead to new ways of doing things in higher education . It is therefore the task of higher education institutions to create learning opportunities that meet possible future requirements for teaching and learning , as well as the development of systems and structures needed to support it . Institutions that are going to succeed are those that are prepared to move beyond their comfort zone and explore innovative ways of collaborating with other stakeholders in search for present-day as well as futuristic solutions with global appeal . Ω
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