Thomas King University of Cape Town

1. STUDENTS AS CAPACITATORS
SUPPORTING OER SUSTAINABILITY
Thomas King

2. The context: sustaining OER trajectory
 The foundational theorisation (e.g. Wiley), online
platforms (OECommons) and legal frameworks (CC
licences) for OER are well established
 The next step is to massify/normalise OER and OEP
practices, particular as uptake has not been as
vigorous as expected (or feared…)
 However, this requires additional resources – OER
production can be streamlined, but will almost
always require more time than closed materials
development

3. Claims of OER
 Efficiency
 Reduce costs
 Democratise learning
 Improve accessibility and reach
 Allow for educator-learner co-creation of materials
 Improve quality
 Peer-to-peer sharing
 Increased collaboration

4. Costs of OER
 E-Infrastructure
 Requires developing new proficiencies
 Intellectual Property Management
 Curation & metadata
 Conceptualisation of context-free/’agnostic’
material design
 Change in practice (e.g. sourcing references)
 Time, time, TIME.

5. Sustainability challenges
 Challenges:
 Incentivisation schemes are uneven or absent
 Not all institutions have support units to assist
interested academics
 Academic staff globally are already time-
constrained
 OER production needs to be sustainable –
which is facilitated by some degree of
localisation. Soft/project funded research
mandates cannot guarantee long-term uptake.

6. Students – a potential resource
 Postgraduate students
 Beginning to develop advanced subject knowledge
 Likely to have experienced course materials from the
student perspective
 Already involved in tutoring and lecturer support
 Have time, and;
 Need money
 Summary: postgrads have the time, capacity and
energy to engage in OER production/facilitation

7. UCT context
 ‘Pride of authorship’ model – no centralised
QA system
 IP policy which shares copyright of teaching
materials and scholarship between academics
and institution
 High degree of academic
freedom/independence
 Relatively autonomous, ‘siloed’ (Hussey, 2012)
nature of academic work

9. Study site: the OER Adaptation project
 Small grant from University of Cape Town
executive to develop OER materials
 Explored employing students as ‘hunter-gatherers’
– identifying lecturers (based on personal/peer
experiences) and attempting to acquire teaching
materials
 Coordinated centrally by an academic coordinator
and a student coordinator (me) who provided IP
training, advice and support

10. Methodology
 Semi-structured interviews with the 5 student
adapters who contributed substantively to the
project
 Structured interviews with 4 participating
lecturers
 Artefact analysis of completed OER
 Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory
employed to determine whether or not student
facilitators could act as change agents,
supporting an institutional OER agenda

11. Training
 Students trained in Intellectual Property
management (copyright clearance and
transmitting such information to lecturers),
curation, and metadata
 Training based on University of Michigan
DScribe process; primary difference being
students were also trained in acquisition
techniques

12. Caveats & disclaimers
 Small study (5 students, 4 lecturers)
 Lecturers in this study were either OER
contributors or engaged in other forms of
online content sharing (other lecturers less
involved in online sharing were approached
but did not contribute)

13. T
Student support
nodes

14. The ‘O’ of OER - Adaptation
 Adaptation:
 Copyright clearance – finding sources of and where
necessary alternatives to all third-party materials
(typically images, sound, video)
 Referencing all third-party material with appropriate
open licences
 Skills: digital literacy, IP/copyright knowledge
 Time: Moderate/High
 Student competence: High
 Lecturer confidence: High

15. The ‘E’ of OER - Generation
 Generation:
 Developing original pedagogical content
 Modifying/supplementing existing pedagogical
content with new examples, more recent
literature, etc.
 Decontextualisation: removing markers that
localised the material specifically to the South
African situation
 Skills: subject knowledge, learning design
 Time: High
 Student competence: Low
 Lecturer confidence: Low

16. The ‘R’ of OER - Publication
 Publication
 Editing completed OER for final upload. Can
include converting to open formats (e.g. Open
Office), compression/reducing file size
 Upload to online institutional/subject repository
after metadata ascription
 Skills: curation, metadata, digital literacies
 Student competence: Moderate/High
 Lecturer confidence: High

17. Discussion
 Students and lecturers largely agreed that
students were best placed to perform copyright
clearance and curatorial activity; less well-
positioned to perform pedagogical modification
 Lecturers disengaged from the minutiae of the
adaptation process – relatively lasseiz-faire
attitude towards the process after agreeing to
contribute
 Lecturers’ responses indicated that they
gained little new knowledge through engaging
in the project

18. Conclusion
 Given that students are skilled in adaptation
and curation, but less skilled in acquisition and
generation, it would appear that they are best
employed not as hunter-gatherers but as
capacitators…

19. Not as in electronics…

20. … but as in ‘helping hands’

21. Conclusion (continued)
 However, students have the potential to contribute
pedagogically if involved early in the materials
design process, particularly for materials they co-
teach.
 Students may (relatively) easily be employed as
capacitating agents in OER production; with some
creativity they can also be employed as
pedagogical co-creators.
 OER advocacy needs to acknowledge that from
the creators’ perspective, at least in the short run,
OER costs time.

22. References
 Hussey, G. D. (2012). The state and future of
research at the University of Cape Town’s Faculty
of Health Sciences. South African Medical
Journal, 102(6).
 ‘Capacitator’ by Gary Houston. Available at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:S.I.-
capacitor-20150807-003.jpg
 ‘Giving a leg up’ by Shane T. McCoy, CC BY-SA.
Available at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/usmarshals/193092
87359/in/album-72157653250378893/