Join us on 5 March, in COL’s celebration of Open Education Week, for an online panel sharing fresh insights into Open Educational Resource (OER) localisation across the Commonwealth.
Facilitated by Professor Lynne Bowker of Laval University and Dr Jako Olivier, Adviser: Higher Education at COL, the session is linked to their forthcoming edited volume, Localisation of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education.
Speakers from Canada, India, and South Africa will present on new research, exploring themes such as generative AI, the integration of multilingual and Indigenous knowledge, student-centred localisation, and policy-driven approaches to adapting OER for local contexts, followed by a Q&A.
Time: 7:00 PST / 10:00 EST / 17:00 SAST / 20:30 IST
Registration link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JsvrjnAKQe2OXyVR0–gkQ
Programme
- Introduction – Dr Jako Olivier & Professor Lynne Bowker
- Short presentations (40 minutes)
- Reimagining OER Localisation through Generative AI: A Conceptual Framework for Higher Education (Adit Gupta, Manas Ranjan Panigrahi, Mool Raj & Aakriti Singh)
- Ubuntu and Open Knowledge: A Theoretical Lens on Indigenous Knowledge Integration in Multilingual OERs (Napjadi Letsoalo)
- From Global Openness to Local Flexibility: The Discursive Localization of OER in Ontario’s Virtual Learning Strategy (Mara Bordignon)
- Science is tough but so are you: Localising resources and centering student experiences (Michelle Willmers, Dale Taylor, Bianca Masuku, Glenda Cox & Mohammed Kajee)
- Questions and answers
- Closing remarks – Dr Jako Olivier & Professor Lynne Bowker
Presenters
Lynne Bowker, the co-facilitator of this session, is a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Translation, Technologies and Society at Université Laval, Canada. She is an advocate for the open movement, and her teaching and research interests include translation, localisation, and translation tools. Her recent book, De-mystifying Translation (2023, Routledge), is available in open access.
Adit Gupta is a Professor, the Principal of MIER College of Education, Jammu, India and the Director of the MIER Group of Institutions, serving 4,000+ students. He holds a PhD in Technology-Supported Learning Environments from Curtin University, Australia, where he also serves as an Adjunct Research Fellow. Professor Gupta frequently presents at national and international conferences, serves as a reviewer for prominent educational journals, and has supervised doctoral and master’s students’ research in educational technology and learning environments.
Napjadi Letsoalo, an Associate Professor at the University of South Africa, is a linguist specialising in Indigenous languages, multilingual OER design, Sepedi linguistics, translation, paremiology and gendered language. He publishes widely, produces influential multilingual OERs, advances digital lexicography, and co‑edited a volume on Soshanguve paremiology, contributing significantly to African language scholarship.
Mara Bordignon is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at Western University, Ontario, Canada, specialising in Critical Policy, Equity and Leadership Studies. Previously an academic librarian, she developed interests in academic scholarship, open access, censorship, and intellectual property. Her current research examines open education policy discourse in Canadian higher education.
Michelle Willmers is a scholarly publishing and editorial manager with 30 years of experience in the field. Over the last 15 years, she has been a senior team member in several landmark open education initiatives at the University of Cape Town, including the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) and Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiatives in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at UCT. Michelle is also an author and researcher and has made extensive contributions to the literature on scholarly communication and open education in the Global South.
