In line with this mission, the AVU sought to have a collaborative and coordinated strategy for the creation, organization, dissemination and utilization of OERs in order to resolve a problem that has affected learning, teaching, research and collaborative intellectual activities on the continent for many years. Open Educational Resources are content/materials that assume an alternative form of copyright and therefore can become more widely available. The AVU believes that OERs are not just about having digitized information, but about having collaborative partnerships that develop methodological approaches and mechanisms for OERs that focuses on the four main elements of the OER evolutionary process: Creation, Organization, Dissemination and Utilization (Pence, 2005). The purpose of the AVU OER Architecture is to lay out the basic building blocks or elements of the OER movement within the AVU network and on the African continent. The constituent parts (or ‘elements’) of the AVU OER Architecture (Creation, Organization, Dissemination and Utilization) are supported by ‘scaffolding’ in the form of the following activity sets: Capacity Enhancement, Sensitization, Technological Infrastructure support, Policy formation, Research, and Collaboration The AVU targets policy makers and managers of the universities as the initial practitioners to be sensitized on the OERs. The AVU OER awareness raising strategy aimed to foster not only awareness of the potential benefits of OERs to enhancing access to education in Africa, but also to promote policy development and research in the creation of OERs. The AVU has so far spearheaded and participated in several OER activities: The MIT-OCW, WSIS 2005, the TESSA Project, the Development Gateway – OER Topic Guide, the AVU OER Seminar, the AVU Vice Chancellors’ Conference, the UNESCO IIEP OER Online Forum, 2006 ICDE Conference, the AVU AfDB/UNDP Teacher Education (TE) Program, the AVU Sabbatical Fellowship and the MIT Linc Symposium. This Pan African Forum on OER is the fruit of collaboration between MAN, ELearning Africa and the AVU. In October 2007, the AVU and the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim of carrying out joint activities to improve the efficacy of teaching and learning by expanding the quantity and increasing the quality of online learning materials and services that can be easily incorporated into educational programs. The AVU recognizes that there are issues that need to be addressed in order for the OER Movement to progress in Africa. The most crucial of the issues include the following: OER sensitization, technological infrastructure, policies and licensing of OERs, and quality assurance. The activities initiated by the AVU are first steps towards full participation in Africa’s growing OER Movement. Despite the relative newness of the OER Movement, there is still need to mainstream the challenges in order to maximize the benefits that institutions stand to gain from OERs. Even with its achievements to date, the biggest challenge at the AVU is now human and financial resources. The AVU is actively working with partners such as UNESCO, MAN, eLearning Africa and others to spread its OER achievements on the continent.
SPEAKER BIO :
Dr. Bakary Diallo is currently Rector of the African Virtual University (AVU), an Intergovernmental Organization based in Nairobi Kenya and specialized in Open Distance and Electronic Learning. He has been working in the education sector for the last 19 years as a secondary school teacher, an academic, a consultant, a project administrator and a researcher. He assumed part-time lecturer at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education in Canada and served as Consultant of Integration of ICT in Education at the Center for University Teaching. His research activities focus on the use of ICT in higher education and international development.
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Bakary Diallo
