Derek Moore (Weblearning)
The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in South Africa are implementing a five-year programme that was conceptualised within the framework of the South Africa – European Union Multiannual Indicative Programme (MIP). The objective is to “assist the Government in transforming the education, training and innovation system so that it contribute to improved economic performance of the country". One of the Department's undertakings is to commit towards lecturers professional development and address barriers to skills and knowledge development learning experienced by lecturers. A proposed initiative in this programme is the adoption and customization of the “Open Umbrella” (https://weblearning.co.za/umbrella/) a self-evaluation tool & field-guide, intended for digital or hybrid educational settings. The open umbrella is licensed under Creative Commons and the tools and resources will be made available as Open Educational Resources (OER) on the DHET portal.
The open umbrella offers manageable steps to course improvement by using open education resources. It is focused on eight practice areas (assessment, teaching and learning strategies, learning activities, communication, administration, design and student support) that relate to course design and delivery. This project has been designed to support the implementation and improvement of digital teaching and learning within these practice areas with open education resources.
The umbrella offers lecturers a systematic and continuous capacity building resources on how to create, access, make available, re-use, adapt, and redistribute OER that correspond directly to their digital courses. Educational practitioners, who have previously used digital modalities, will use the open umbrella to self-evaluate their current provision against baselines within these practice areas. The resources available allow them to re-consider the current approach to digital education, participate in demand led professional development and make benchmarks against which they can measure improvements to their courses. Those who use the self-evaluation tool and companion resources to work through the eight practice areas and identify the particulars associated with their implementation of technology in their course, will derive value from the combination of ed tech expertise and online pedagogy.
In this proposed interactive activity, participants will be 1) invited to review their current online courses using the current baselines within the open umbrella 2) Visit the accompanying field guide to set benchmarks for their future courses 3)Annotate the whole resource using hypother.is.
Extended abstract: OE_Global_2021_paper_95.pdf 📄
Activity Details
UNESCO OER Action Area: Building capacity
Format: Asynchronous Interactive Activity
Language: English
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This activity can be completed at any time during (or after) the conference.
Instructions and materials for the activity will be added below by the authors. They will provide specific details on how to participate and what to share back as a response to the activity.