{"id":724,"date":"2010-04-20T14:38:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T13:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=724"},"modified":"2010-04-20T14:38:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T13:38:10","slug":"oer-and-ict-for-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2010\/04\/oer-and-ict-for-development\/","title":{"rendered":"OER and ICT for development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Unwin asks &#8211; why are OERs not more widely used by people in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa), when intuitively they would deliver huge value?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m afraid I missed documenting much of this talk. Tim challenged the OER model &#8211; it isn&#8217;t working (in this geographic area) &#8211; why not? Is OER essentially &#8216;imperialist&#8217;? Those involved are generally white, male, and older. Many OERs are not high quality &#8211; even flagship efforts like MIT OCW often very basic material available &#8211; e.g. just course outlines or basic powerpoint slides.<\/p>\n<p>Biggest challenges:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Changes in personnel<\/li>\n<li>Funding mechanism diversity<\/li>\n<li>Time committments<\/li>\n<li>Failure to understand &#8216;meanings&#8217; &#8211; ICT4D (ICT for development) more than just computers in labs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Practical Realities<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Structure and financing of African Universities &#8211; and now agendas around new private universities<\/li>\n<li>Traditional didactic model of teaching &#8211; counter to particpatroy models<\/li>\n<li>Role and &#8216;income&#8217; of unversity teachers<\/li>\n<li>Intellectual elitism &#8211; are African universities really serving their peoples&#8217; development needs?<\/li>\n<li>Dependant mentalities &#8211; &#8216;where is the next grant coming from?&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>Limited human capacity &#8211; but some outstanding individuals<\/li>\n<li>Dominance of individualism &#8211; idea that HE is about individual benefits and gain, not about community<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Implications\/Questions for &#8216;us&#8217; (i.e Europe\/US)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fundamentl challenge of education as a public or private good<\/li>\n<li>How much do we really use OERs in our own work?<\/li>\n<li>Can we afford the time to help African academics achieve their ambitions?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Unwin asks &#8211; why are OERs not more widely used by people in Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa), when intuitively they would deliver huge value? I&#8217;m afraid I missed documenting much of this talk. Tim challenged the OER model &#8211; it isn&#8217;t working (in this geographic area) &#8211; why not? Is OER essentially &#8216;imperialist&#8217;? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-beyond2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":726,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions\/726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}