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This presentation at OE Global 2018 discusses open educational resource and open eductional practice activities and projects in the Global South under Gidden's (2010) social inclusivity lens, with an eye to answering the question "Whether, why, and how do OEP and OER contribute to the social inclusion of underserved communities in the Global South?" It explores the idea that although OER and OEP may widen access to materials, they may also have an unintended consequence of reinforcing epistemic dependency on Global North pedagogies and theories.
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- 1. Degrees of social inclusion: Open educational practices and resources in the Global South Henry Trotter & Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams OE Global / 24 April 2018 / Delft, The Netherlands www.slideshare.net/ROER4D/
- 3. Whether, why, and how do OEP and OER contribute to the social inclusion of underserved communities in the Global South?
- 4. Neoliberalism ACCESS Human capital theory Social capital theory Free-market economics Gidley et al.’s (2010) notion of social inclusion (Adapted from Gidley, Hampson, Wheeler and Bereded-Samuel 2010, p. 2)
- 5. Social justice PARTICIPATION Partnership theory Critical pedagogy Feminist theories Neoliberalism ACCESS Human capital theory Social capital theory Free-market economics (Adapted from Gidley, Hampson, Wheeler and Bereded-Samuel 2010, p. 2) Gidley et al.’s (2010) notion of social inclusion
- 6. Human potential EMPOWERMENT Postcolonial theories Pedagogies of hope Social justice PARTICIPATION Partnership theory Critical pedagogy Feminist theories Neoliberalism ACCESS Human capital theory Social capital theory Free-market economics (Adapted from Gidley, Hampson, Wheeler and Bereded-Samuel 2010, p. 2) Gidley et al.’s (2010) notion of social inclusion
- 7. ACCESS: The OEP that best illustrates this level of social inclusion is OER use (“as is”)
- 8. Extent to which OER use is widening access of materials to educators in the Global South ROER4D’s cross-regional, nine-country study suggests that 51% of the 295 randomly selected educators surveyed reported having used OER at least once (de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono & Cartmill 2017) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Malaysia Indonesia India South Africa Kenya Ghana Colombia Chile Brazil S&SEAsia Sub Saharan Africa South America Yes, have used OER Not sure if used OER Never used OER
- 9. Extent to which OER use is widening access of materials to students in the Global South ROER4Ds’s cross-regional, nine-country study suggests that 39% of the 4784 randomly selected learners surveyed reported having used OER at least once (de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono & Cartmill, ROER4D Sub Project 2 data set) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Malaysia Indonesia India South Africa Kenya Ghana Colombia Chile Brazil S&SEAsia Sub Saharan Africa South America Yes, have used OER Not sure if used OER Never used OER
- 10. Factors influencing the adoption of OER to widen access to educational materials 1. OER awareness 2. Technical capacity 3. Infrastructural access 4. Availability of suitable OER 5. Socio-economic status
- 11. PARTICIPATION: The OEP that best illustrates this level of social inclusion is OER adaptation (revising or remixing)
- 12. Extent to which participation in education is encouraged through OER adaptation (revising or remixing) by educators in the Global South ROER4D’s cross-regional, nine-country study suggests that 18% of the 295 randomly selected educators surveyed reported having adapted OER at least once (de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono & Cartmill, ROER4D Sub Project 2 data set) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% India Indonesia Malaysia Ghana Kenya South Africa Brazil Chile Colombia S&SEAsia Sub Saharan Africa South America Modified OER Not Modified OER
- 13. Extent to which participation in education is encouraged through OER adaptation (revision & remixing) by students in the Global South ROER4D’s cross-regional, nine-country study suggests that 6% of the 4784 randomly selected learners surveyed reported having modified OER at least once (de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono & Cartmill, ROER4D Sub Project 2 data set) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% India Indonesia Malaysia Ghana Kenya South Africa Brazil Chile Colombia S&SEAsia Sub Saharan Africa South America Modified OER Not modified OER
- 14. Factors encouraging participation in OER adaptation 1. Pedagogical practices 2. Institutional support mechanisms 3. Institutional policies 4. Disciplinary norms 5. Collaboration (including communities of practice)
- 15. EMPOWERMENT: The OEP that best illustrates this level of social inclusion is OER creation
- 16. Extent to which OER creation contributes towards empowering educators in the Global South ROER4D’s cross-regional, nine-country study suggests that 23% of the 295 randomly selected educators surveyed reported having created OER according to comparison with educators selection of licence type and creation of educational resources (de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono & Cartmill, 2017) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Malaysia Indonesia India South Africa Kenya Ghana Colombia Chile Brazil S&SEAsia Sub Saharan Africa South America Created OER Not created OER
- 17. Extent to which OER creation contributes towards empowering students in the Global South ROER4D’s cross-regional, nine-country study suggests that 9 % of the 4784 randomly selected learners surveyed reported having created OER (de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono & Cartmill) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% India Indonesia Malaysia Ghana Kenya South Africa Brazil Chile Colombia S&SEAsia Sub Saharan Africa South America Created OER Not created OER
- 18. Factors leading to greater empowerment through OER creation 1. Motivation (reputation enhancement) 2. Personal fulfilment and confidence 3. Participation in funded implementation and research projects 4. Co-creation with students 5. Epistemic stance
- 19. EMPOWERMENT PARTICIPATION ACCESS Degrees of social inclusion Educators = 51% Students = 39% Educators = 18% Students = 6% Educators = 23% Students = 9%
- 20. EMPOWERMENT PARTICIPATION ACCESS Degrees of social inclusion • Motivation (reputation enhancement) • Personal fulfilment and confidence • Participation in funded projects • Co-creation with students • Epistemic stance • Pedagogical practices • Institutional support • Institutional policies • Disciplinary norms • Collaboration • OER awareness • Technical capacity • Infrastructural access • Availability of OER • Socio-economic status Educators = 51% Students = 39% Educators = 18% Students = 6% Educators = 23% Students = 9%
- 21. Conclusion: Implications for OER advocacy ACCESS HEI educators in the Global South enjoy reasonable “access” to OER, with the majority in our survey having used them “as is” (the easiest form of OEP compared to the more difficult activities of revising, remixing or creating OER). But while the use of OER “as is” by educators in the South can indeed lead to greater social inclusion, as they ensure that crucial knowledge is incorporated in their teaching to their students, it can also ironically and inadvertently lead to greater epistemological dependency and inequality if the OER are drawn primarily from the Global North (which can easily be the case given the greater preponderance of OER creation in the GN) and if the educator handles them in an uncritical manner.
- 22. Conclusion: Implications for OER advocacy ACCESS This is to say that the OER available for use are not politically neutral. They may be “useful” in a technical and educational sense, but they may also be “loaded” or “biased” in ways that militate against the broader desire for social inclusion. Thus, if we advocate for the use of OER, we too need to remain cognizant of the fact that not all OER would be beneficial for certain contexts. They may ultimately reinforce the exclusion that the OEP was meant to overcome.
- 23. Conclusion: Implications for OER advocacy PARTICIPATION Our respondents appeared to find OER revising and remixing the most challenging OEP pedagogically, as it requires extensive engagement with others’ materials, a time-consuming activity which, for many, can be overcome by just developing one’s own materials one’s self. Hence the low levels shown with this OEP. However, this is precisely the kind of critical engagement that many materials – especially those deriving from dominant or hegemonic epistemological contexts – require if they are to promote both knowledge and social justice in classrooms in the Global South. That is why we found it so important to distinguish between this type of OER use and that of OER use “as is”, because it allowed us to go beyond a superficial reading of OER activity and get better qualitative detail about the potential of that OER use as regards social inclusion.
- 24. Conclusion: Implications for OER advocacy PARTICIPATION We as open advocates need to better understand the political implications of the various types of OEP, including revising and remixing. As pedagogical activities, these practices are far more robust and critical than the copying-and-pasting that can sometimes happen with the use of OER “as is”. It may even be worth being explicit with this in our advocacy work, telling educators, students and administrators alike that the revision and remixing of OER – or any type of teaching material (such as a copyrighted textbook) – leads to greater “participation” for educators and students than the simple use of a resource “as is”.
- 25. Conclusion: Implications for OER advocacy EMPOWERMENT For educators and students in the Global South, perhaps the greatest potential of OER is not that they can be used freely, but that they can created and shared freely. Not that they can be consumed freely, but that they can be produced freely! Indeed, OER provide a platform for educators to make public epistemological assertions, assertions that – once upon a time – might have only been heard by the students in one’s own classroom. But with OER, educators from any background can share their personally developed teaching materials not only with their students, but with the entire world. That act of creation is empowering, not only for the educator who may gain in reputation or esteem (or not), but also for the community out of which those knowledge assertions arise. The creation and sharing of knowledge through OER, especially by educators from marginalized contexts, validates that knowledge and allows it to interact with knowledge assertions from other contexts. This process has its risks, for sure, but risk-taking is central to the creation and sharing of OER, and the promotion of an authentic and personally relevant epistemic stance.
- 26. Conclusion: Implications for OER advocacy EMPOWERMENT Numerous obstacles stand in the way of OER creation, especially copyright policies (which typically vest copyright of teaching materials in the hands of the institution rather than the educator who created them), but if we want to really promote social inclusion at the highest level, we should: • encourage educators in the GS to create and share OER. • ask that, when they do use OER, they try to draw as much as possible on the OER creations from other GS educators. • encourage educators from the Global North to use, revise and remix more OER from the Global South, allowing the contributions of GS educators to enhance the knowledge they engage with and teach to their students.
- 27. EMPOWERMENT For greater detail on this research Educators = 23% Students = 9% See Chapter 16 in the new open access ROER4D volume, Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South: roer4d.org/edited-volume-2
- 29. References de Oliveira Neto, J. D., Pete, J., Daryono & Cartmill, T. (2017). OER use in the Global South: A baseline survey of higher education instructors. In C. A. Hodgkinson-Williams & P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South. Chapter 3 advance publication. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.154559 Gidley, J., Hampson, G., Wheeler, L. & Bereded-Samuel, E. (2010). Social inclusion: Context, theory and practice. The Australasian Journal of University-Community Engagement, 5(1), 6-36. https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:4909
- 30. Citation and attribution Trotter, H. & Hodgkinson-Williams, C.A. (2018). Degrees of social inclusion: Open educational practices and resources in the Global South. Presentation at OE Global, Delft, The Netherlands, 24 April 2018. Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/ROER4D/
Editor's Notes
- How does OEP and OER contribute to social inclusion?
- Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) in the Global South project, focuses on OEP and OER activities in three regions: South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. ROER4D consists of 18 sub-projects with more than 100 participating researchers and research associates in Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Uruguay, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
- The research question we are dealing with here in this presentation is: Whether, why, and how do OEP and OER contribute to the social inclusion of underserved communities in the Global South?
- What do we mean by social inclusion? “ … can be understood as pertaining to a nested schema regarding degrees of inclusion. The narrowest interpretation pertains to the neoliberal notion of social inclusion as access;…” (Gidley, Hampson, Wheeler and Bereded-Samuel 2010, p. 2)
- “ … a broader interpretation regards the social justice idea of social inclusion as participation…”. (Gidley, Hampson, Wheeler and Bereded-Samuel 2010, p. 2)
- “ … whilst the widest interpretation involves the human potential lens of social inclusion as empowerment”. (Gidley, Hampson, Wheeler and Bereded-Samuel 2010, p. 2)
- The ROER4D cross-regional study by de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono and Cartmill was based on a survey of 295 randomly selected educators at 28 higher education institutions (HEIs) in nine countries across the three ROER4D regions. Just over half (51%) of the educators surveyed stated that they had used OER at least once; one quarter of them (25%) had never used OER; and almost another quarter (24%) were not sure whether they had used OER. This shows that, while a small majority have used OER and have some familiarity with it, a sizeable minority have never done so and/or are not aware of the concept. In addition, the level of OER use appears to be slightly differentiated by region: 50% in South America, 46% in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 56% in South and Southeast Asia.
- From the coding of the qualitative data, 5 factors emerged as influencing whether and how educators and students adopted OER. Listed in order of frequency, these shape potential adopters’ level of access to OER, the foundational basis of social inclusion. First is OER Awareness, which simply means: to what extent, if at all, are educators and students aware of OER as a concept? We found that respondents exhibited variable levels of awareness based on a widespread confusion about which materials are “free” or “open” to use on the internet. This was due, in part, to their perceptions of abiding “fair use” legal provisions and common educational practices, but it was also exacerbated by the ease with which online materials may be downloaded free of charge, regardless of licence. Second is Technical capacity, which concerns educators and students level of technical competence to search for, identify, use, adapt, share, license, retain and upload OER. We found that the slightly specialised competence demanded for OER activity reduced levels of OER adoption in a general sense, but also made it more likely that, of those who did adopt OER, they used OER “as is” rather than creating and sharing their own. Use of OER “as is” comprises the most basic form of OER adoption with the lowest barriers to such activity, thus it is the OEP that we associate with this access level of social inclusion. Third is infrastructural access, which pertains to the speed, stability and cost of one’s internet connection; the types devices that one has access to; and the reliability of one’s electricity provision. We found that most educators in the higher education sector had good levels of infrastructural access, though this was much more variable for students in that sector, as well as for educators and students in the K-12 sector, especially in rural areas. The fourth is Availability of suitable OER, which concerns not only the sheer number of OER available on the internet, but their appropriateness for an educator’s or student’s specific anticipated use. The numbers of OER available in general are growing, though they compete with other online materials which may be copyright-protected. As we found, educators and students use online materials based on their perceived relevance rather than on their “open” licensing conditions. Lastly, the socio-economic status of a country in which educators and students live appears to have a variable relationship with OER adoption. Our research found no direct link between levels of OER adoption and levels of broader national economic development (as expressed by GDP per capita). What it did show was that educators and students required a certain minimum level of infrastructural access - which is an indicator of socio-economic status - to be able to adopt OER at a broader level. This condition was largely met at HEIs, but not always in the K-12 sector, or rural areas - no matter what the national GDP numbers were.
- If access is satisfactorily achieved, educators and learners can move on to the more profound social inclusion component of participation with OER, which is linked to social and educational justice. Listed in order of frequency, these shape potential adopters’ level of access to OER, the foundational basis of social inclusion. The first factor of participation concerns pedagogical practices, evident in the incipient shifts of teachers’ and lecturers’ towards greater sharing of educational materials, including (but not exclusively) OER. While the use of the textbook as the core source of information was still the norm within the schooling sector, many teachers seemed keen to use OER as a supplement in a localised or summarised form. Despite infrastructural challenges, they appeared willing to also share materials with each other, if in a more informal manner (such as emailing each other) rather than uploading their materials to a public repository. Second, educators appreciate any institutional support that they can get for adopting OER. This support might be in the form of OER creation grants, legal support personnel for copyright management and licensing, an institutional OER platform, and an on-campus unit with OER specialists who are available to help staff. Our research found this type of support to be rare, but at one South African university where all of this support exists, it has been instrumental in increasing the proportion of educators involved in not only using, but creating and sharing OER, including in OER-based MOOCs. Third, institutional policies can have a massive influence on whether, or to what extent, educators and students may engage with OER. Most of the institutions we researched did not have OER-specific policies, meaning that any potential OER activity was governed by national copyright legislation and institutional IP policies, which are largely antithetical to OER activity. However, some institutions - especially at the university level - have drafted pro-OER policies or strategies that either grant copyright of teaching materials to the educator who created them (allowing them to share their materials as OER) or commit the institution to managing and sharing the teaching materials of its educators under an institutional banner (similar to MIT). Fourth, disciplinary norms can often influence the pedagogical decisions that educators make, especially when assessing a new educational innovation such as OEP and OER. If OEP is common in their field, then they have to decide for themselves whether to participate in such practice. If it is not common, then it may not even require a conscious decision, either because they remain unaware of OEP and OER or because they see OEP as a niche or optional activity. Fifth, if we consider OEP as consisting of a “spectrum” of activities, from individually-based to group-based, then we can focus on the maximal form of OEP as advanced by the open community, which is that of sustained collaboration, or the development of communities of practice. For OER advocates, this represents the fulfilment at a developmental and practice level of the open ethic, in which educators collaborate with each other as a norm, building identities or communities around those collaborations. In our research, while collaboration in general was quite common, collaboration in the making of OER was quite rare, limited usually to experimental contexts, such as the launching of a MOOC initiative at one South African university, and the development of an OER library by an NGO in Afghanistan. [This text here is good, but I didn’t know where to put it with the 5 categories. Perhaps it could be a coda, spoken by you, after going through the 5 factors. Or we just leave it out for the presentation:] Because current OER repositories host mostly English materials, lack of OER in languages relevant in the Global South remains a challenge. It forms a barrier to full access and participation. However, as we saw, some educators from India, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan have started contributing materials in local languages to various local platforms with the help of government or foreign donor funding. The ongoing support for these existing and new communities of collaborative OER developers may be a strategy for surmounting the need for linguistically appropriate materials.
- The ROER4D cross-regional study by de Oliveira Neto, Pete, Daryono and Cartmill was based on a survey of 295 randomly selected educators at 28 higher education institutions (HEIs) in nine countries across the three ROER4D regions. According to the multi-region survey, 23% of the 295 educators stated that they had openly licensed (i.e., shared) their teaching materials in some fashion (de Oliveira Neto et al., in press). This is just less than half the percentage who stated that they had “used” OER before. That there are fewer OER creators than users can be expected, given that there are lower barriers to OER use than to OER creation. But there is also a discernible relationship between users and creators, in that virtually all creators have used OER at some point as well (ibid.). Their familiarity with OER through use may have helped make OER creation an imaginable activity for themselves. Thus the power of an OER use experience cannot be discounted for inspiring educators to contribute their own work as well. Data source: SP2 cleansed data from Dutra - instructors with license numbers (2)
- Source: Dutra - Students selected data
- Lastly, the third tier of the social inclusion concept concerns empowerment, a notion that is ideologically informed by human potential theories. This high-level form of social inclusion through OEP was embryonic within the ROER4D studies. It was emerging in the contribution of original OER to public repositories by educators and the offering of MOOCs by university lecturers in association with their own institutions and hosting platforms. For school teachers, this represented the development of a new level of agency in privileging their own perspectives on what constitutes valuable knowledge, thereby increasing their accountability and influencing their reputation beyond their usual sphere of influence. Likewise for university lecturers, the offering of MOOCs provided an opportunity to assert alternative epistemic perspectives on a global scale involving both personal and institutional reputational risks. By contributing original OER and/or offering MOOCs, teachers and lecturers were offering knowledge to the world in their own unique voices and through their own “theory from the South”, engaging in a dynamic conversation with hegemonic epistemic perspectives while strengthening their sense of self-identity. The three factors which emerged from our research for increasing the likelihood of OER creation, the most empowering form of OER adoption, were: First, motivation, especially due to educators’ hope of enhancing their reputations through sharing their teaching materials as OER. In some cases, such as one South African university, educators may receive official recognition for their OER contributions (in this case, an award given at a public ceremony), although in most other instances that recognition comes from feedback from users of the content who share words of praise and gratitude and then share the resource further with their colleagues. According to most Indian university lecturers in one study, sharing educational resources was perceived as improving their professional standing, enhancing their personal reputations, and boosting their institutional reputations. It is hard to overstate the importance of this form of empowerment for the sustainability of the open movement. For while openness is based primarily on an altruistic ethical foundation, it leverages more self-centred personal ambitions for educators as well. The combination of these desires – to enhance one’s reputation while also making a contribution to society – allows for a type of empowerment at multiple levels. Second concerns personal fulfillment and confidence. Many educators from across the studies revealed that they got a great deal of satisfaction from sharing their materials openly. It addressed a deeply held desire concerning what type of educator they wanted to be, how they wanted to operate in the world, and how they imagined themselves to be at their most effective. Amongst Indian university lecturers, the highest score that they collectively attributed to various attitudinal survey prompts related to the pleasure they felt when adopting or adapting their educational resources. It also enhanced their sense of confidence as it made them feel like they were an important part of a larger community. In addition, they felt that sharing OER was a useful way to disseminate their ideas and to obtain feedback. In many ways, this is quite personal, as ROER4D researchers also met many educators who said that they would currently not get the same sense of fulfilment out of openly sharing their materials because they were concerned about their quality and the potentially critical assessment they might receive from colleagues. It would “expose” them. For those able to get their materials into a state that they believed not only reflected well upon them as educators but would also be of real value to others, the act of sharing their materials openly was a gratifying one. Third relates to participation in funded implementation and research projects. Many educators engaged in the Global South would not have participated in OER creation activities without the intervention of an outside organization that had the capacity to help them develop materials and demonstrate what OEP looks like. This points to the continued relevance of the donor community in creating opportunities for educators, especially teachers, to embark on an OER creation exercise within the safety of a larger group of collaborators, and quality assured by the rigorousness of the process. Such interventions represent not a norm for the future of all OER expansion, but one of a number of activities that helps educators experiment with OER and gradually build up their capacities and confidence.
- So when we speak about equitable access, we need to be aware that mere access to and use of existing OER should be the starting point and that participation through adaptation could ultimately lead to empowerment through the creation of OER. We have to first ensure that the basic opportunity factors are address, meaning that: Educators and students are aware of OER That they have the technical capacity of find and use OER That they have the requisite connectivity, hardware to find and use OER Sufficient local OER are available to suit various curricula in various languages And that educators and students are financially supported (e.g. zero-rating OER sites) But access is not enough - participation in adapting OER for local conditions, meaning that Teachers are encouraged to shift their practices to sharing resources with one another That institutional support exists - technically and/or pedagogically That institutional policies are supportive of sharing and creation That disciplinary norms may be encouraging of adaptation of OER That time and effort is directed at deliberately supporting teacher collaborations In or to empower educators and student to contribute OER we need to: Tap into what might motivate them to do including reputation enhancement, and personal fulfilment Provide funding and support for implementation and research projects with local governments Encourage opportunities for teacher to co-create with their students.