Open Education Resources and Opportunities for Research

By Chao Charity Mbogo

Panel Presentation at e-learning innovations conference, Nairobi.

A bit of my background

• Bsc Mathematics & Computer Science –KeMU.

• Msc Computer Science - University of Oxford.

• Head of Department, Computer Information Systems, KeMU.

• PhD Computer Science - University of Cape Town (Grad 2015).

• Google Anita Award Winner – Europe, Middle East and Africa (2014).

Current research

Scaffolding new learners of Javaprogramming to write programs on a

mobile phone

What is OER?

OER describes any educational resource that is openly (freely) available for use and permits re-use by educators and

learners.

Examples of OER

• Learning content: MIT Open Courseware

• Tools: Open Source Software

• Implementation Resources: Intellectual property licenses promoting free publishing.

Why get involved in OER?

• ‘What you give, you get back improved.’

• Can be used as PR to attract new students.

• Lowering education cost.

• Generate revenue through Ads.

Challenges of OER

1. Compromise on quality.

Opportunities for research: Quality

• Opportunity 1: Develop /Use Plagiarism detection systems at our institutions.

• Opportunity 2: Study the impact on use of current plagiarism detection systems.

• Opportunity 3: Devise internal quality checks that can be documented and published.

Opportunities for research: Quality

• Opportunity 4: User evaluation

•

Opportunities for research: Quality

• Opportunity 5: Peer review systems.

• I would wish to see full paper submissions in future eLearning innovations conferences.

• Indexed access to Google Scholar etc.

Challenges of OER

2. Sustainability

• How useful is your resource?

• Interoperabilty

• Funding

Opportunities for research: Sustainability

• User-Driven research.

• From design to evaluation

Opportunities for research: Sustainability

• Good research is one that kicks the door open for another researcher to go through.

• Originality is the only kick hard enough to open the door for further research.

Opportunities for research: Sustainability

• Writing grant proposals

• Involve learners to design payment models: For example, the conversion model.

• Follow the community model (involving targeted stakeholders).

Conclusion

• OER provides numerous research opportunities.

• ELearning is the right platform to be involved in OER.

• Let us not compromise on quality for quantity.

• Users, Users, Users.

Thank you!

@evangelinechao

chaombogho@gmail.com