Rapporteur Report: Open Textbooks in Africa

Rapporteur: Mojca Drevenšek

Summary: Open textbooks are an important phenomenon in the global higher education landscape with benefits in cost savings and quality content development that address localisation and decolonisation of the curriculum. The purpose of this asynchronous interactive activity was to engage participants in a discussion on a range of topics related to open textbook development in the African context. It was aimed at anyone interested in the role of open textbooks for promoting social justice, and potential funders of work in this area.

Activity details:
- Title : Open Textbooks in Africa
- UNESCO OER Action Area: Facilitating international cooperation
- Format: Asynchronous Interactive Activity
- Language: English

Resources : DOT4D – Digital Open Textbooks for Development

Authors: Glenda Cox (University of Cape Town), Maha Bali (American University in Cairo), Judith Pete (Tangaza University College), Bianca Masuku (UCT), Michelle Willmers (University of Cape Town)

Participation statistics (17th Nov 2021):
- Views: 216
- Users : 6
- Replies : 9
- Likes : 7

1. ORGANISATION AND ENGAGEMENT OF PARTICIPANTS:

  • Hosted by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project in collaboration with experienced OE practitioners at two African universities.
  • Purpose: to a conversation between the key stakeholders who are involved in or have potential interest in open textbook production in Africa.
  • The organisers welcomed participants interested in open textbooks who would like to connect with African colleagues, explore open textbooks in Africa and build a network.

2. THE PROCESS OF INTERACTION :

  • A document was shared on the perspectives of Open Textbooks in Africa where the organisers’ vision is briefly presented: OE Global 2021 - Open Textbooks in Africa - Google Docs.
  • The interactive part of the shared file offered a set of questions that stimulated a discussion, focusing on the current situation regarding open textbooks and asked the participants about:
    • the kind of help they need,
    • the kind of help they can offer,
    • how they see the next steps for the open textbook project’s sustainability and funding.

3. SUMMARISED FINDINGS FROM THE DISCUSSION :
- Help is needed regarding:

  • Better reward/acknowledgement for open textbook production.
  • Publishing infrastructure to facilitate dynamic, openly licensed content delivery.

- Help can be provided regarding:

  • Practical implementation support in content creation, resource design and publishing.
  • Insight into sustainable models of content creation and publishing.
  • IP and copyright expertise.

4. RELEVANCE OF THE ACTIVITY FOR THE ACTION AREA:
This asynchronous activity focused especially on the following two aspects of the UNESCO Recommendation on OER / Action area: Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation:
* Promoting and stimulating cross-border collaboration and alliances on OER projects and programmes, leveraging existing collaboration mechanisms and organizations,
* Supporting the creation and maintenance of effective peer networks that share OER.

5. KEY CHALLENGES:
The main challenges around open textbooks in Africa are around the following aspects: curriculum transformation, decolonisation, localisation, translation, enabling local authorship and including students in co-creation, design and feedback.

6. PLANNED NEXT STEPS OF THE ORGANISERS’ TEAM:
* A paper on models for open textbook development, including Guidelines for open textbook development, focusing on creating open textbooks in constrained environments (e.g. infrastructure, resources), is being written.
* Build a community or network to collaboratively approach funders on both the national and international levels.
* An extended conversation is planned to be continued with interested stakeholders outside Africa: partners and colleagues interested in the idea of Open textbooks in Africa.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Link to the results of the landscape survey, implemented under the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project, that aimed to gain a sense of current open textbook production and publication activity taking place within the university and to produce an openly licensed baseline dataset on open textbook activity that can be utilised in further research and advocacy activity: Open Textbook Landscape Survey Report: What’s Happening at UCT? | Digital Open Textbooks for Development

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