An open approach to capacity building
Open course ware may help create academic teaching communities supporting higher education institutions in developing countries. Since 2008 the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has been promoting open access to learning materials and lectures through the Wikiwijs programme, one of the many open course ware initiatives worldwide.
Higher education institutions in developing countries often struggle to secure funding and retain academic staff. As the number of students continues to grow they need to invest in new curricula to meet the demands of the labour market within an international knowledge-based economy.
Why reinvent the wheel?
Open educational resources and open course ware can be very cost-effective in the process of developing, improving and diversifying (new) curricula and learning materials. After all, a lot of material is already available for reuse and adaptation.
More and more higher education institutions from developing countries are joining the OpenCourseWare-consortium, which has so far published some 14,000 courses and lectures on channels like iTunesU and YouTubeEdu. The Saylor Foundation has recently launched an open course ware portal with the complete curricula for bachelor’s majors in twelve domains.
UNESCO endorsement
The crucial role open resources can play is clearly described in a UNESCO/COL report. The report concludes that, ideally, institutions should create open educational resources and reuse them from elsewhere.
Download the reportSucccess stories
There are numerous examples of successful North-South collaboration, such as Teacher Education Sub-Saharan Africa. There are also successful open resources-based initiatives around informal education such as the Peer-to-Peer University (P2P) and the OER university, which rely on voluntary teachers.
These teachers may be retired academic staff who want to remain involved in education and research, or students who spent part of their study in a developing country and wish to maintain links with that country.
A wealth of opportunities
The increase in open materials offers high-quality opportunities to higher education institutions in developing countries. In addition, it is possible to jointly offer education and adapt materials with peers from the North. This will strengthen institutional capacity through exchange of expertise, quality of teaching and learning.