REPLICATING SUCCESS IN COMMUNITY MEDIA
As a small organisation, COL’s reach is limited. One way of maximising effectiveness is by encouraging replication of successful models and approaches. Partners are encouraged to integrate COL tools and materials and share good practices with other organisations. This is increasingly common in the area of community media and participatory development communication, as seen in two recent examples of activities that were engendered, but not directly supported, by COL.
Volunteers from Karas FM in Keetmanshoop work on a story development exercise
Photo: Izzy Pitman
COMMUNITY LEARNING IN NAMIBIA
The Media and Training Centre for Health (MTC), a non-governmental organisation based in South Africa, conducted a five-day training workshop at Karas FM community radio in Keetmanshoop, Namibia, in partnership with UNESCO Windhoek. Participants learned how to produce content that reflects community needs, how to involve listeners as active contributors to content development and how to collaborate with partners in the health and development sectors.
Staff from Radio Riverside in Upington, South Africa shared their experiences implementing a community learning model supported by COL and its partner, MTC. COL encourages this type of South-South collaboration that shares best practices and builds capacity in community media for informal learning.
STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY VOICES IN JAMAICA
The Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) and community radio station ROOTS FM hosted a workshop in content creation and production skills for 25 people representing community groups and non-governmental organisations in inner-city Kingston. The aim of the initiative, which is sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is to enable community producers to create media content that raises public awareness about under-reported issues related to poverty and development.
Using programme design tools shared by COL in previous training workshops, participants each created one radio programme that will be aired on ROOTS FM. This was not a “one-off” programme; the community workers will develop a series of radio programmes that deal with social issues such as parenting, substance abuse and disaster preparedness. In addition to significantly diversifying the programming on ROOTS FM, this workshop is engaging a broad range of community groups in content development.
Karas FM volunteer reporter Beverley Stephanus conducts a vox pop interview for a story on under-age drinking in Keetmanshoop as part of the MTC training workshop.
OERu: INCREASING ACCESS TO POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
By Jim Taylor and Wayne Mackintosh
Existing delivery models cannot address the growing global demand for post-secondary education. Many countries do not have the resources to build the number of conventional universities that would be required to meet the future demand for tertiary education. However, the open web and free content licensing of learning materials provides a scalable and sustainable solution.
In response to this challenge, the Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation convened a strategic international planning meeting on 23 February 2011 to seed an innovation partnership that aims to create a parallel learning universe based solely on OER learning materials for students excluded from the system with flexible pathways to earn credible qualifications for their work on a fee-for-service basis. Quality assurance and institutional accreditation is the foundation on which this network is based.
With open education resources (OER), the marginal cost of replicating digital learning materials is near zero, and sharing course development costs improves cost efficiencies. Through collaboration, post-secondary institutions can harness these benefits to provide access to students excluded from the system through their community service mission.
The OER university (OERu) network aims to provide more affordable access to post-secondary education for the estimated 100 million learners in the world who are qualified for a seat in tertiary education today, but due to funding issues or lack of tertiary education provision, will not be able to gain credible qualifications.
This tertiary education network proposes that OERu students will gain free access to high-quality courses that are designed for independent study using OER. OERu learners will receive student support through a global network of volunteers and peer support using social software technologies. Students can be assessed for a fee by participating institutions and earn a credible credential.
The OER university network will comprise accredited educational institutions. From an investment decision perspective, participation in the OERu does not require new money, but rather a reallocation of existing staff time to releasing selected development outputs under open content licenses for the OERu network. The OERu model anticipates that no more than one percent of existing budget time would be required for release under open content licenses. The institutional recurrent costs of assessment and credentialisation services will be recouped on a cost-recovery basis from student fees and/or other sources. Shared infrastructure and co-ordination for the OERu collaboration activities will be provided by the OER Foundation.
The OERu network is now recruiting founding anchor partners from around the world to join the OER Foundation, the University of Southern Queensland, Australia and Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand to commence implementation plans for the first credential, which is envisaged to be operational within the next year.
The OERu network is the means by which education at all levels can be more accessible, more affordable and more efficient. You can join the OERu network in building sustainable education futures.
Professor Jim Taylor, AM is the former Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Learning Services), University of Southern Queensland
and is professor at the Australian Digital Fu-
tures Institute at the University of Southern Queensland.
Dr. Wayne Mackintosh is the founding Director of the Open Education Resource Foundation and founder of WikiEducator.
http://wikieducator.org/OER_university
http://wikieducator.org/File:OERu.pdf
View Sir John Daniel’s video presentation to the OERu network foundation meeting in February and his subsequent blog post.
http://vimeo.com/19268389
www.col.org/blog130
NEW UNESCO-COL CHAIR AT ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY
COL and UNESCO, in partnership with other funding contributors including the Government of Alberta, Canada, established a fifth joint Chair in January. Dr. Rory McGreal, Vice President of Research at Athabasca University, Canada, holds the UNESCO/COL Chair in Open Educational Resources (OER) at Athabasca. Dr. McGreal and his team will promote the use of OER at the institutional, national and international levels, particularly in the developing world, and conduct research to support this.
www.col.org/chairs
SPECIAL AFRICAN ISSUE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
The August issue of Distance Education, the official journal of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA), will be a special issue on Africa. The guest editors for this issue are Neil Butcher, South African Institute for Distance Education; Colin Latchem, open learning consultant, Australia; Lisbeth Levey, Senior Advisor to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Monica Mawoyo, South African Institute for Distance Education.
The special issue (Volume 32/2, 2011) includes case studies and findings about professional training and incentives for staff embarking on distance education, mobile learning, distance education-based teacher training, OER development and use in African higher education, copyright law and the benefits of inter- and intra-institutional collaboration.
www.tandf.co.uk/journals/DistanceEducation
(see: www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/spissue/cdie.pdf for information on how to obtain free access to this issue for 30 days - offer ends 29 February 2012)