Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks · of multiple rural farm communities and cooperatives. The USIU agribusiness training course was developed as OER to help both farmers (who

The purpose of the Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) is to help learning organizations continually improve the quality, scale, and breadth of online programs according to their own distinctive missions, so that education will become a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines.

This publication contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reprinted material is quoted with permission, and sources are indicated. A wide variety of references are listed. Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the authors and the publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or for the consequences of their use.

The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) License.

Attributions should be made with a full citation including the link to the article or issue available by search at the JALN webpage, http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln_main. Please direct all inquiries to [email protected].

Submission Guidelines for Authors and Subscription Information Inside Back Cover

Publications assistants: Damien Bilka, copy editor Laura Scott, copy editor Cover design by Leighton Ige

Copyright ©2013 by Sloan-C®

Published 2013 Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

International Standard Book Number 978-1-934505-11-3-1-934505-11-0 (print) International Standard Book Number 978-1-934505-12-0-1-934505-12-9 (online)

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 17: Issue 2

http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln_main

mailto:[email protected]



Interim Editor in Chief Gary Miller

Executive Director Emeritus of the World Campus The Pennsylvania State University

[email protected]

Guest Editors

Christine Geith, Ph.D. Assistant Provost and Executive Director, MSUGlobal

Michigan State University

Karen Vignare, Ph.D. Associate Provost, Center for Innovation in Learning

University of Maryland University College

Associate Editors

Alice Barlow-Zambodla Ph.D. Programme Specialist, Saide - South African Institute for Distance Education

John Kaneene, DVM, M.PH. Ph.D, FAES, FAVES,

University Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Director Michigan State University

Nodumo Dhlamini ICT Programme Manager

RUFORUM

Catherine Ngugi Project Director

OER Africa The Sloan Consortium, Inc. is a consortium of higher-education providers sharing the common bonds of understanding, supporting and delivering education via asynchronous learning networks (ALNs). With the mission of providing learning to anyone anywhere, the Sloan Consortium seeks to provide new levels of learning capability to people seeking higher and continuing education. For more information about Sloan-C, visit http://sloanconsortium.org.

mailto:[email protected]

http://sloanconsortium.org/



Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks Volume 17 Issue 2 July 2013

Special Issue on Open Educational Resources and Online For International Rural, and Hard-To-Reach Populations

Christine Geith and Karen Vignare, Editors 1. Introduction to the Special Issue on OER and Online for 7

International, Rural, and Hard-to-Reach Populations Karen Vignare, University of Maryland University College Christine Geith, Michigan State University

2. Agshare Open Knowledge: Improving Rural Communities through 11

University Student Action Research Christine Geith, Michigan State University Karen Vignare, University of Maryland University College

3. Using OER as a Tool for Agribusiness Management Training 21

for Hard to Reach Rural Farmer Populations Max Maina Muniafu, United States International University

4. Creating Open Educational Resources for Teaching and 31

Community Development through Action Research: An Overview of the Makerere AgShare Project John B. Kaneene, Michigan State University Paul Ssajjakambwe, Makerere University Stevens Kisaka, Makerere University RoseAnn Miller, Michigan State University John D. Kabasa, Makerere University

5. Creating Open Educational Resources for Teaching and 43

Community Development through Action Research: The Milk Production and Hygiene Model Paul Ssajjakambwe, Makerere University Christopher Setumba, Makerere University Stevens Kisaka, Makerere University Gloria Bahizi, Makerere University Patrick Vudriko, Makerere University John D. Kabasa, Makerere University John B. Kaneene, Michigan State University


6. The Potential Of A Multi-Media Open Educational Resource 51

Module In Enhancing Effective Teaching And Learning In Post-Graduate Agricultural Program: Experience From AgShare Project Model Jemal Yousuf Hassen, Haramaya University

7. Building Academic Staff Capacity To Support Online Learning 63

In Developing Countries Brenda Mallinson, South African Institute for Distance Education, Rhodes University Greig Krull, South African Institute for Distance Education

8. Addressing The Local In Localization: A Case Study Of Open 73

Textbook Adoption By Three South African Teachers Cynthia Jimes , Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) Shenandoah Weiss, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) Renae Keep, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME)

9. Turning The Digital Divide Into Digital Dividends Through Free 87

Content And Open Networks: Wikieducator Learning4content (L4c) Initiative Patricia Elisabeth Schlicht, Commonwealth of Learning; OER Foundation (Volunteer)

10. Using Multilingual Analytics To Explore The Usage Of A Learning 101

Portal In Developing Countries Vassilis Protonotarios, University of Alcala Giannis Stoitsis, University of Alcala Kostas Kastrantas, Agro-Know Technologies Salvador Sanchez-Alonso, University of Alcala

11. An Open And Scalable Learning Infrastructure For Food Safety 119

Nikos Manouselis, Agro-Know Technologies Charalampos Thanopoulos, Agro-Know Technologies Karen Vignare, University of Maryland University College Christine Geith, Michigan State University

12. CMOOCS and Global Learning: An Authentic Alternative 133

Carol Yeager, SUNY Empire State College Betty Hurley-Dasgupta, SUNY Empire State College Catherine A. Bliss, University of Vermont

Introduction

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 17: Issue 2 7

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON ONLINE LEARNING AND OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) FOR INTERNATIONAL, RURAL, AND HARD-TO-REACH POPULATIONS

Karen Vignare, PhD University of Maryland University College

Christine Geith, PhD Michigan State University

KEY WORDS Open Educational Resources, Africa, agriculture, WikiEducator, curriculum development, higher education, OpenCourseWare, OER, open content, open technology platforms, food, development, open knowledge, research, development, international, AgShare, participatory action research, metadata, multilingual tools, learning analytics

I. INTRODUCTION

This special issue of the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks on Online Learning and Open Educational Resources (OER) for International, Rural and Hard-to-Reach Populations is a compilation of projects spurred by global changes and needs in education. Extending knowledge and education to the masses through Internet technologies has flourished for the last 15 years. The reach of online education is beginning to penetrate international and rural populations. OER plus online learning are a powerful set of tools that extend reach and lower costs [1]. This special issue showcases projects and trends that, when combined, are changing the scope and reach of education.

II. THE AGSHARE COLLECTION: IMPROVING TERTIARY EDUCATION FOR AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

The first set of papers is the result of a grant generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation called AgShare. Detailed by Geith and Vignare, their paper describes changes in the methods of graduate agriculture education [2]. Graduates of higher education in developing regions can become the brightest future leaders in industry, government, and academia and be positioned to implement change that will directly and positively affect their communities. Enabling them to fulfill this potential with the appropriate education and training requires, among other things, providing faculty with upgraded curriculum. OER can be instrumental in addressing these requirements through products and processes that support curriculum innovation. Often, universities in developing regions are severely hampered by out-of-date graduate teaching materials, coupled with inadequate funding to purchase new textbooks and teaching aids. If planned and implemented properly, OER can help overcome these limitations because, by their very nature, OER are produced to be shared, modified, and made freely available through learning networks. These graduates work on real community problems and, as a result, extend science-based knowledge into the community. The AgShare projects all demonstrate how, by changing the current paradigm of lecture-based education, graduate students and universities can become a solution to the myriad of rural agriculture problems.

Introduction

8 Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Volume 17: Issue 2

For instance, United States International University (USIU) [3] in Kenya has robust curriculum in business and information technology and has applied interdisciplinary agribusiness practices to the needs of multiple rural farm communities and cooperatives. The USIU agribusiness training course was developed as OER to help both farmers (who had limited training in commercialization of agriculture) and farmer organizations. Both the undergraduate students and faculty championed entrepreneurial mindsets to shift farmers’ thinking from seeing the farm as just a farm to focusing on the farm being a firm. The students and faculty frequently followed up with the farmers in field visits and received positive feedback on the OER materials. However, the uptake and use of the digital materials is limited by the availability of the Internet in rural areas and lack of computers. Another AgShare project, conducted at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, was designed to create OER for teaching and community development through action research. The university worked with a small rural community of dairy farmers [4, 5]. The study was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of investigators from the fields of veterinary medicine and agribusiness. Two master of science students conducted dairy value-chain action research that produced case materials that they used to create OER course modules (milk hygiene and marketing modules) and to design interventions that would improve milk production, quality, and safety; reduce milk spoilage; increase prices received by farmers; and support on-farm processing of yogurt and other dairy products. The students used their work to create community literature, case studies, and their theses. Graduate programs in agriculture in developing countries such as in Ethiopia are often designed to meet the need for skilled manpower for agricultural development [6]. In Ethiopia, the government expects agricultural graduates to contribute to the transformation of smallholder agriculture. However, no effective model has emerged in which graduates are regularly making concrete contributions to the urgent needs of agricultural development. The author of “The Potential of a Multimedia Open Education Resource Module in Enhancing Effective Teaching and Learning in a Postgraduate Agriculture Program: Experience from AgShare Project Model” states, “Among the key findings from this experience is that a multimedia OER module developed against clearly defined educational needs, with authentic content designed according to sound educational principles, can lead to direct and immediate improvements in the quality of teaching and learning, which enables learners to acquire knowledge and skills that fit an ultimate purpose in a real-life context [6].”

III. OER MAKING A DIFFERENCE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

While the AgShare projects are seeding new methods of learning and growing the creation and use of OER, there are multiple other projects in Africa doing similar work in education settings. This special issue of JALN is privileged to include papers on projects that illustrate a powerful international trend in which OER and the educational methodology changes afforded by the projects are profoundly altering the development of education in many developing, rural, and international contexts. This first paper in this section presents a case study of the adoption and use of open textbooks by three high school teachers in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa [7]. The textbooks, collaboratively authored and distributed through the South African-initiative Siyavula, are available online and are openly licensed, allowing teachers to freely use, modify, print, and share them with peers. The authors build on prior research with the project and provide in-depth qualitative studies from the teachers. The second paper in this section focuses on the issues faced by higher education institutions (HEIs) in Africa in responding to the expanding demand for tertiary education while maintaining or enhancing the quality of their course offerings [8]. The growing demand requires a more sophisticated adoption of information communication technologies. The paper shares the design and development of an openly licensed capacity-building intervention and the piloting thereof with academic staff at three educational institutions in southern Africa. They conclude that building the skills of academic staff is critical to the success of growing OER throughout the continent.

Introduction


IV. POTENTIAL OER DISRUPTIONS

The final section of this special edition focuses on OER technology platforms and methods, compared to the previous papers, which focused more on their application in education settings. Techniques include MOOCs, Wikis, and using analytics and metadata. The first paper in this section explores the growth of WikiEducator and the availability of open source wiki technologies to meet the needs of informal and formal learning. WikiEducator, founded in 2006 [9], initially operated with funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (WFHF) under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organization created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources, and technology. WikiEducator’s flagship, the Learning4Content (L4C) project, builds capacity among global educators by teaching wiki technology to newcomers and experts in the field of open education. The uptake of L4C has exceeded expectations for those who do not have access to online content or even computers. The authors of “Using Multilingual Analytics to Explore the Usage of a Learning Portal in Developing Countries” report on efforts to document information about how learners search for information [10]. The field of learning analytics is evolving, and it is critical to understand the choices of learners and users of international information portals. As the adaptation of existing portals in multilingual environments is a cost- and time-consuming aspect of the development of a portal, the outcomes of learning analytics are important because they may provide the requirements on which further multilingual services of a portal will be built, ensuring their efficiency. The paper aims to identify and interpret the behavior of users from developing countries visiting a multilingual learning portal using the log files of the portal by applying the methodology defined in previous work by Stoitsis et al. [11]. The next paper in this section shares information about a technology infrastructure currently in demonstration mode at Michigan State University that is aimed at supporting the improvement of global food safety [12]. The technology collects various agricultural education content (e.g., training descriptions, open educational content, competencies, standards) and provides that content through various interfaces, depending on the needs of the targeted audience. The overall architecture of the infrastructure for the food safety sector and the necessary components are presented, as are the main usage scenarios that explain how the infrastructure can enhance existing platforms and services in the areas of food safety and food security. The final paper explores MOOCs and their potential for credentialing within a global context [13]. The paper focuses on a specific type of MOOC called a cMOOC, which is based on the theory of connectivism and is better aligned with the nature and purpose of OERs. The authors describe the two cMOOCs they offered. The paper provides research on one of these cMOOCs, which was independently created by a third author, and also provides student comments that demonstrate the intercultural connections that are shared within a cMOOC.

V. CONCLUSION

The combination of all twelve articles creates a rich understanding of the power of OER, when combined with better teaching and learning practices, to impact international, rural, and hard-to-reach populations. While the special journal is by no means comprehensive, the trends indicate that using OER and online learning with underserved populations requires understanding and purposeful design if these technologies are to serve these distinct communities.

VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This special journal was inspired by the great work of all the AgShare project partners, including United States International University, Makerere University, Moi University, Haryamaya University, OER Africa, RUFORUM, and SAIDE. There are also individuals who were critical in providing crucial information and advice, and they include Liz Levey, Ken Harley, Gashaw Kebede, and Krishna Alluri. From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we wish to recognize the current program officers: Brady

Introduction


Walkinshaw, Shan Hu, and Roy Steiner. We also wish to thank the initial program officer, Khalid Bomba, who helped create the AgShare concept. We also wish to recognize the team at MSUGlobal who supported the AgShare project, including Sunnie Kim, Gwyn Shelle, Julie Orler, and Angie Martin. In the College of Veterinary Medicine, John Kaneene’s partnership and advice was critical to a successful outcome. A special thanks goes out to the Sloan Consortium and its Editors Janet Moore (former) and Gary Miller (current) for their continuous support to publish this special edition of the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks.

VII. REFERENCES 1. Geith, C. and Vignare, K. Access to Education with Online Learning and Open Educational

Resources: Can They Close the Gap? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 12(1): 1–22 (2008). http://www.distanceandaccesstoeducation.org/contents/JALN_v12n1_Geith.pdf

2. Geith, C. and Vignare, K. AgShare Open Knowledge: Improving Rural Communities through University Student Action Research. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

3. Maina, M., Wambalaba, F., Nduati, G., Wanyama, W., and Ndirangu, D. Using OER as a Tool for Agribusiness Management Training for Hard-to-Reach Rural Farmer Populations. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

4. Kaneene, J., Kisaka, S., Ssajjakambwe, P., Miller, R., and Kabasa, J. Creating Open Education Resources for Teaching and Community Development through Action Research: An Overview of the Makerere AgShare Project. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

5. Ssajjakambwe, P., Kisaka, S., Vudriko, P., Setumba, C., Bahizi, G., Kabasa, J.D., and Kaneene, J. Creating Open Education Resources for Teaching and Community Development through Action Research: The Milk Production and Hygiene Module. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

6. Hassen, J.Y. The Potential of a Multimedia Open Education Resource Module in Enhancing Effective Teaching and Learning in a Postgraduate Agriculture Program: Experience from AgShare Project Model. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

7. Jimes, C., Weiss, S., and Keep, R. Addressing the Local in Localization: A Case Study of Open Textbook Adoption by Three South African Teachers. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

8. Mallison, B. and Krull, G. Building Academic Staff Capacity to Support Online Learning in Developing Countries. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

9. Schlicht, P. Turning the Digital Divide into Digital Dividends through Free Content and Open Networks: WikiEducator Learning4Content (L4C). Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

10. Protonotarios, V., Stoitsis, G., Kastrantas, K., and Sanchez-Alonso, S. Using Multilingual Analytics to Explore the Usage of a Learning Portal in Developing Countries. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

11. Stoitsis, G., Manouselis, N., and Sanchez-Alonso, S. Data Set Requirements for Multilingual Learning Analytics. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL), 4(1/2): 47– 66 (2012). ISSN: 1753-5255

12. Manouselis, N., Thanopoulos, C., Vignare, K., and Geith, C. An Open and Scalable Learning Infrastructure for Food Safety. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

13. Yeager, C., Hurley-Dasgupta, B., and Bliss, C. CMOOCs and Global Learning: An Authentic Alternative. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, in press (2013).

http://www.distanceandaccesstoeducation.org/contents/JALN_v12n1_Geith.pdf


AgShare Open Knowledge: Improving Rural Communities through University Student Action Research

AGSHARE OPEN KNOWLEDGE: IMPROVING RURAL COMMUNITIES THROUGH UNIVERSITY STUDENT ACTION RESEARCH

Christine Geith, Ph.D. Michigan State University

Karen Vignare, Ph.D. University of Maryland University College

KEYWORDS Open educational resources, Africa, agriculture, curriculum development, higher education, OpenCourseWare, OER, open content, food, agriculture, development, open knowledge, research, development, international, AgShare, participatory action research, case study

I. INTRODUCTION

The aim of AgShare is to create a scalable and sustainable collaboration of existing organizations for African publishing, localizing, and sharing of science-based teaching and learning materials that fill critical resource gaps in the African master of science (MSc) agriculture curricula. Shared innovative practices are emerging through the AgShare projects, not only for creating and sharing open educational resources (OERs), but also for collaborating with stakeholders and students to bridge the gap between theory and local practice in African university agriculture curricula [1]. AgShare also involves advocating for and finding open resources in agriculture that can be shared and customized by users. AgShare includes training for faculty but also incorporates the development of open content created by students, farmers, and community partners. Technical work supports improvements in distribution of OERs so that open resources are more easily searched and found, making re-use of them more common. AgShare is having a promising impact on curricula innovation, faculty practice, student research, and agricultural organizations [2]. In 2009, AgShare was co-created by Michigan State University, OER Africa (an initiative of the South African Institute for Distance Education), and faculty at four African universities: Makerere University in Uganda, United States International University in Kenya, Moi University in Kenya, and Haramaya University in Ethiopia. Having successfully completed a two-year planning and pilot project, AgShare is currently in Phase II with the support of a second round of funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and partnership with RUFORUM (Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture).

II. BACKGROUND

Agricultural education in African universities is severely hampered by out-of-date graduate teaching materials, coupled with inadequate funding to purchase new textbooks and teaching aids [3]. If planned and implemented properly, OERs can help overcome these limitations because by their very nature, OERs are produced to be shared, modified, and made freely available through learning networks. When Internet access is routinely available throughout Africa, OERs will be able to reach their full potential, and demand for easily accessible materials will grow dramatically. In the meantime, OERs can be distributed off-line in print and DVD formats.



African agricultural education is also severely limited by the gaps between classroom teaching and the research that positively affects farming practice and rural well-being. At present, stakeholders, particularly farmers as the end-users of the technology, generally contribute little to identifying research or curriculum priorities. Moreover, faculty originate from urban areas and have limited firsthand agricultural experience. Additionally, linkages with external stakeholders are not well established or supported to convey important current information on the status of regional agricultural challenges. The result is that many students and faculty are disconnected from the context and issues of smallholder farmers [4]. The effectiveness of agricultural technology generation and dissemination systems requires improved responsiveness to farmer needs.

III. METHODOLOGY A. Exploring the Landscape Three activities helped inform the definition of the problem space, which would ultimately be addressed by the planning and pilot phase of the AgShare project. The first activity was a report commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Michigan State University in 2008, which summarized the lay of the land for OER in agriculture and analyzed potential models for using OER for masters curricula in agriculture in Africa [5]. The report, an inventory of known agriculture OERs, indicated that there is not yet a critical mass of OERs in the field, suggesting that opportunities exist to shape new resources and to include communities in collaborative creation of local resources for effective graduate student training. Following the report, a meeting was held in the United States in February 2009 that explored the potential for OERs in more detail and laid the groundwork for collaboration. Participants included RUFORUM; U.S. land-grant universities, including Michigan State University and Washington State University; Creative Commons; WikiEducator; Connexions; OER Africa; and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. These meeting participants confirmed that OER products and processes are an emerging way to recapitalize higher education in the agriculture sector in Africa in several ways: OERs bring openness and transparency to the process of creating and sharing knowledge locally and globally; OER s bring flexibility and adaptability to knowledge products; and publishing knowledge using OER methods enables scalability as well as localization of teaching and learning resources. A second meeting was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in March 2009. Participants included RUFORUM, Michigan State University, OER Africa, FLOSS4Edu, and the Women of Uganda Network. This meeting explored potential African collaboration and discussed potential solutions for farmer impact using OERs. During the array of meetings leading up to the AgShare planning and pilot project, participants concluded that OERs could be a promising methodology to bridge gaps in the curricula. These participants hypothesized that by observing farming practices and listening carefully to local farmers during field research, students and faculty could incorporate this information into course materials. It is a potential strategy for the creation and co-creation of knowledge; a method by which African university faculty, students, and scientists can share their knowledge not only in the classroom, but also across the nation, the continent, and the globe. These OER materials could be openly shared and re-used as case studies and best practices in classroom teaching. Equally significant—not only could the OER content be useful, but the process of co-creation itself is also valuable in building the capacity of participating faculty and students to be responsive to farmers’ needs.

B. Developing the AgShare Planning and Pilot Phase The results of the exploration stage informed the vision and rationale for designing the planning and pilot project for AgShare. Summarized in table 1, the rationale resulting from the exploration stage includes issues and assumptions on which the AgShare design is based, as well as indicators that formed a partial foundation of the evaluation metrics of the pilot projects.



Rationale Indicators Teaching materials in African universities are inadequate.

Breadth and depth of current teaching materials are not aligned with defined learning outcomes Lack of relevant, science-based examples to illustrate theory

There is a disconnect between agriculture graduate studies and the needs of small farms.

Topics in agriculture curricula not aligned with needs of small farms Low level of student and faculty interaction with farmers

Graduate study curricula are not aligned with the public and private employment sectors.

Topics in agriculture curricula not aligned with needs of employment sectors Fewer degree options available in high-demand careers Low level of student and faculty interaction with employment sectors

Current curricula are static; incorporating OER modules makes ongoing change easier.

OER materials currently contribute less to enriched and modified curricula

Student learning is passive. Low amount of OERs that students author and co-author Student feedback not necessarily incorporated into curricula development process Pedagogy is based primarily on lecture

Recognition for the OER sector’s potential growth in Africa is growing.

Low number of OERs available Low visibility of African OERs

Table 1. AgShare Planning & Pilot Rationale

AgShare’s long-term vision of success is to have a scalable, sustainable, and open system for African publishing, localizing, and sharing of teaching and learning materials. These materials are intended to fill critical resource gaps in African MSc agriculture curricula and can be modified for other downstream uses. The long-term goal is the sustainable use of AgShare methods, driven particularly by ongoing student engagement in community research, content development, and knowledge-sharing activities in postgraduate programs at African universities actively supporting agricultural communities to effect positive change across key identified agricultural value chains. The primary planned outcome of AgShare is the abundant creation and use of new and revised teaching and learning materials, particularly in areas where critical knowledge is in demand in African MSc agriculture curricula. Secondary planned outcomes are professional development for university faculty and staff, including the creation of open training materials; downstream modification of new and relevant content for extension and non-governmental organization staff; increased active student learning through the collaborative creation and use of OERs; and the establishment of feedback loops involving educational, research, extension, and farming communities for continual improvement and localization of materials. Proof-of-concept projects were designed to create a strong evidence base for the value o f harnessing OERs to support the development of agriculture in Africa. The AgShare planning and pilot project included objectives to demonstrate the following:

1. Course materials can be created relatively rapidly and cost effectively in areas of need by both harnessing the research work of students and by adapting existing openly available educational resources rather than developing them from scratch.

2. Deployment of such course materials into higher education programs, if designed according to sound educational principles, can lead to direct and immediate improvements in the quality of the learning experience and thus create enhanced conditions for improving learning outcomes for learners participating in those programs.



3. Where course materials are developed as OERs against clearly defined educational needs, there are immediate and practical opportunities to facilitate their re-use by other university agriculture faculty.

4. Actively engaging students in the production of educational materials will enhance thei r own learning experiences.

5. Structured relationships between academics, students, content suppliers, and community-wide partners, such as farmers, farmers’ associations, and agribusinesses, can be built through the facilitation and sharing of OERs. This process can have positive impact for all parties.

6. Once OERs have been created for specific educational purposes (e.g., a master’s degree program) through structured relationships, it becomes easier and less costly to re-package these materials for different target audiences (for example, farmers or agribusinesses) than if one seeks to produce materials separately for each of these target audiences.

C. Selecting Pilot Partners Project leaders identified universities as anchor partners, with the understanding that to align with MSc agriculture curricula gaps, the starting point is faculty and their needs for teaching materials. Our first strategy for engaging potential university partners was via circulation of a needs assessment questionnaire examining the unmet needs of different postgraduate programs in agriculture. The questionnaire was circulated to selected schools, based on recommendations from two well-established African university consortia in agriculture universities specifically focused on the construction of regional master’s degree programs: RUFORUM and the Collaborative Masters Program in Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE). We limited the geographic scope of initial partners to East Africa, where CMAAE, RUFORUM, and OER Africa are headquartered, in order to contain travel costs. Through discussion with RUFORUM, it was decided to focus on the Agriculture Information Communication Management Program, as there are clear and immediate needs for development of materials, thus providing a timely opportunity to test the creation and use of a full course using an OER that can be easily adapted and replicated across the RUFORUM network of universities. Haramaya University was selected by RUFORUM to participate in the pilot because it is actively involved in the development of the Agriculture Information Communication Management Program. Through circulation of the CMAAE questionnaire, Moi University in Kenya and Haramaya University in Ethiopia were selected because they demonstrated the greatest willingness to participate. Makerere University was selected because it is one of the oldest institutions in Africa and is internationally known in research and graduate training programs in agriculture. Additionally, it has a strong infrastructure and reputation for managing and participating in international projects relating to research and graduate training. United States International University, Kenya, was selected, as it is a leading business school seeking to develop a pedagogical model and a framework that utilizes a practical case method and active learning processes to assist farmers to transform their traditional practice of farming as a livelihood to farming as a business enterprise. D. Capacity Building A kick-off planning meeting was held to begin the AgShare pilot and planning project. During the event, the leadership team at each pilot developed their plans and deliverables with the support of Michigan State University faculty and OER Africa. Following the planning, OER Africa worked closely with each pilot partner, providing consultant and project management support, as well as providing documentation and training through workshops at each of the pilot sites. Examples of capacity-building topics in the AgShare support for each pilot include the following:

• Introduction to the concept and principles of OER • Identification and collection of suitable existing OERs to support materials development • Instructional design training • Peer-review processes



• Identification of suitable multimedia components • Uploading of materials on learner management systems • Introduction to videography, imagery, and recording • Materials quality improvement processes • Packaging of materials in to various formats; e.g., paper based and electronic

E. Evaluating Pilot Outcomes Each pilot project used different strategies to achieve the goals for the AgShare planning and pilot phase. The impact on teaching and learning was assessed by two external evaluators in relation to student researchers who conducted the research on farms: students who experienced the multimedia modules that were produced and academic staff who supervised the research and underpinned the OERs they developed and taught to their students. The first evaluator provided an interim report on whether the understanding of OER and the AgShare methods were growing as result of the pilots [6]. The second evaluator used education theories on the contexts of learning, the teacher/student relationship, and the structure of curriculum to analyze project documents and interview data [7]. This evaluator also examined the outputs of the planning and pilot phase against planned objectives, including the use of created OERs adopted by faculty beyond those in the pilot.

IV. FINDINGS

The AgShare method, as implemented in the planning and pilot phase, is founded on field-based research carried out by faculty and students. That research served three purposes in most cases: (1) underpinning research-based teaching through case studies, (2) feeding back information to the farming community to improve practices there, and (3) supporting master’s thesis research. Partner universities constructed their individual pilots in line with regional needs, as well as institutional ethos, priorities, strengths, and constraints. The faculty participated in a series of workshops provided by OER Africa. The faculty who participated found they could apply AgShare methods and OERs to various community research needs [6]. As a result, the faculty electing to begin with OER production for their own master’s students developed commodity-focused case studies in relation to coffee, maize, the dairy value chain, and agricultural extension. In these cases, the downstreaming of materials to farmers was via a follow-up activity. In some instances, these materials have been used as an integrated part of community development initiatives run by the universities. One example of this approach was the Makerere University graduate student action research model, which used a dairy industry value chain approach and involved an interdisciplinary team of scientists from the Colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture. This approach successfully demonstrated that outcomes of graduate students’ action research can be used to effect positive change along the whole dairy value chain. In addition, the information generated from the graduate students’ action research has been used to create teaching modules with relevant field case examples to be used at universities. Thus, the students have served as agents of positive change.

A. OER Products The AgShare pilot projects produced a wide range of publicly available and easily localized OERs in several different media. The materials are disseminated through the OER Africa website (http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/AgShareResources/tabid/1405/Default.aspx). These materials are integrated into program delivery at the four pilot universities across Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya. Open materials include videos and case studies in agribusiness and maize and coffee pricing. The materials include 10 teaching cases, 7 multimedia DVDs, 19 community brochures, and 6 community posters. Three student master’s theses were part of the AgShare work.

B. Impact on Students

http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/AgShareResources/tabid/1405/Default.aspx





The second external evaluator found that the project had a highly positive impact on the student researchers creating the multimedia materials for their action research, stating that “student-researchers benefited in several ways, but mainly in terms of their enhanced contextually relevant specialist knowledge and induction into field-based research under the guidance of academics with whom they worked closely. Theory and practice came together [7].” The short duration of the pilot projects did not allow time for the AgShare materials to be widely implemented in formal courses; however, interviews with the small number of students who used the materials in courses offered during the pilot phase revealed that “students who studied the resulting OER benefited from content developed in authentic contexts and presented in interactive ways that brought the subject alive. The OER allowed them to adjust the sequencing and pacing of their own learning in line with their own needs and interests. Amongst other OER assets, students appreciated clear curriculum structure and more purposeful forms of assessment [7].”

C. Impact on Faculty Interviews with faculty participating in the pilots indicated that “like their students, academics experienced the OER as an ‘eye opener’ that presented new and exciting possibilities for teaching. Their case study research led to new understandings of farming practices and associated value chains as well as to teaching that was now genuinely research based. In contrast with the traditional model of classroom- based lecturing, the case study-based, multimedia OER resulted in a major shift in the way academics now construed their roles as teachers (rather than as lecturers) and as researchers [6,7].”

D. Impact on Farmers Related to AgShare’s impact on farmers, the second evaluator reported that “in direct and indirect ways, the Planning and Pilot Project has impact on several thousand farmers, primarily as a consequence of AgShare training in large farmer cooperatives. Students using questionnaires designed by two agricultural experts collected data on actual impact. The agricultural experts used the completed questionnaires to provide independent reports on project impact on farmers. Overall conclusions with respect to impact were further informed by the preliminary and draft reports of systematic studies on impact of the intervention on milk production and its quality. All data and reports indicated that AgShare had a highly positive OER impact on farmers and the broader agricultural community [7].”

E. OER Re-use In terms of re-use of the AgShare OER, this objective occurred within the framework of existing consortia such as RUFORUM and CMAAE, where members of the consortia have shared their material with each other to facilitate re-use. At the other universities, the brief time frame of the pilots resulted in the second evaluator’s conclusion that “there has been a fair amount of advocacy within OER-producers’ personal networks. Nonetheless, actual ‘take up’ requires decision-making and university approval processes that make consideration of this form of impact premature at this stage [7].”

F. Additional Impacts The second evaluator found that “in addition to its formal aims, AgShare had significant secondary effects. Impact extended beyond farmers to sectors of the value chain as well as contributing to the status and role of women involved in agricultural production. The third and most significant form of secondary impact was on the partner institutions themselves. By providing a conceptual model of cooperation between the university and its community, the project was seminal in the repositioning of one university to achieve its mission of teaching, research and serving the community [7].” The AgShare pilot projects demonstrated a wide range of positive impacts. The second evaluator noted the following:

AgShare is possibly unique in having achieved a highly positive impact across a range of stakeholders from those involved in agricultural research, as well as in teaching and



learning, to those engaged in agricultural production and marketing. What made this possible? Evidence from this impact assessment points to a single overarching reason: the logic and power of the AgShare model and the effectiveness of its implementation. Case study research on farms provides the basis for integrating the roles and functions of those who teach and learn agriculture in higher education with the productive sector and associated value chains [7].

G. OER Dissemination The ability to disseminate information is critical to further uptake. The AgShare project team led by OER Africa and Michigan State University developed a website which followed best practices for dissemination of resources [8]. The initial design included the creation of a dedicated search engine that would scrape the website to share the resources. The programming time required to create an effective search engine promised to eat a significant portion of the budget. The team began to explore alternative options and soon located the website Coherence for Information for Agriculture Research for Development (http://www.ciard.net/). The international resources for managing web projects provided the needed information to tag resources geared toward agriculture. Each university team was provided with additional information on how to replicate the efforts on a local level [9].

V. DISCUSSION

The AgShare planning and pilot phase demonstrated an effect on farmers, student researchers, and faculty and students in the classroom. AgShare pilots transformed the way in which academics conceptualized their roles as teachers and researchers by validating community-based problems as research and by collaborating with students and stakeholders [10]. AgShare pilots created relevant and effective student learning in the coursework component of the master’s degree, enabling students to engage with local issues versus abstract theory. AgShare pilots increased the students’ capacity to conduct meaningful, high- quality, independent research, which becomes part of the public record and adds demonstrable research to the students’ resumes. AgShare pilots improved farmers’ practices that lead to improved quality and productivity and positioned them to begin moving away from subsistence farming. AgShare pilots produced free, openly-licensed educational resources for customization and re-use that improved the quality of teaching through relevant case studies.

A. Resulting AgShare Method The AgShare planning and pilot phase resulted in the definition of a powerful road-tested method that provides strategies for a coherent institutional approach to teaching, research, and community development. The AgShare core strategy is a research-based approach for the co-creation and publication of purposeful agricultural knowledge within and across stakeholder groups. Multiple-media OERs provide an appropriate methodology as they are intended to be shared, modified, and made freely available through learning networks. The AgShare method as defined in the AgShare II proposal has four components:

1. Projects commence with field-based research into farmers’ practices and needs. Students, working closely with their faculty supervisors, carry out this research. Research involves relevant community-wide partners within respective value chains.

2. Students, faculty, and staff participate in capacity-building workshops in research, OERs, and media production.

3. Student field research (or participatory action research) is published in three ways: as OER multimedia learning packages for incorporation into degree programs; as information for farmers used for follow-up visits and extension materials; and as research in master’s thesis and undergraduate student research.

4. The OERs are published in appropriate venues leading to recognition for scholarship, teaching,

http://ciard.net/

http://ciard.net/

http://ciard.net/

http://www.ciard.net/



research, and extension. The research-based nature of the AgShare method, with students conducting research in the field involving multiple stakeholders, is its essential component. OERs are developed from this research by student and faculty teams for teaching and learning in the classroom, for extension in the field, and for scholarly research publication where appropriate.

VI. CONCLUSION

Working in partnership with four universities around East Africa, the AgShare planning and pilot phase produced exciting results through the creation of African-based, open curricular materials that are easily localized. This work involved the incorporation of new faculty processes, active learning, and engagement by universities with community stakeholders. It also involved a graduate student research agenda that focused on serving the smallholder farm community. The process of growing open, shareable African-led, resource-based curricula will thus help to drive sustainable agriculture productivity for many years to come. The AgShare planning and pilot phase has successfully demonstrated the value of building structured relationships between academics, students, content suppliers, and community-wide partners, such as farmers, farmers’ associations, and agribusinesses to facilitate the creation and sharing of open knowledge in the form of OERs. This content is being used to build capacity and strengthen knowledge systems across the agricultural value chains targeted in the pilot. The current phase of AgShare Phase II is focused on embedding the AgShare method into the practices of RUFORUM. The objective of Phase II is to complete the following:

Identify, produce, adapt and widely encourage the use, re-use and dissemination of relevant and contextualized African open content to build a comprehensive set of open curriculum and research resources to support new and existing Master’s and course-based PhD level agricultural degree programs. The main focus would be on open knowledge resources that would be generated as outputs from student-centered community participatory action research activities and would aim to directly improve agricultural outcomes at different levels through targeted value chains of staple crops such as maize, coffee and legumes, as well as through livestock such as cattle and poultry [11].

Universities have a critical role to play in developing agricultural value chains around key crops and livestock. Graduates of African programs in agriculture can become the brightest future leaders in industry, government, and academia, positioned to implement impactful change that will directly and positively affect small farms and rural communities. Working together, particularly through postgraduate academic programs, faculty and students are ideally positioned to develop stronger national knowledge systems in agriculture, to build capacity right across the value chains, and to improve the quality of data used for decision making through effective research. When the intellectual property generated through this activity is released under open licensing models, it creates a sustainable platform for ongoing strengthening and development of these value chains by making knowledge publicly accessible and easy to re-version and adapt.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to the many people that helped shape the AgShare concept and those who supported the work with their time and participation. The authors are especially grateful to the co-creators and partners in AgShare: Dr. John B. Kaneene of Michigan State University; Neil Butcher, Catherine Ngugi, and Dr. Alice Barlow-Zambodla of OER Africa/Saide; and Nodumo Dhlamini and Joan Apio of RUFORUM. They are especially thankful for the outstanding work of the AgShare pilot project leaders: Dr. Jemal Yousuf Hassen, Dr. John David Kabasa, Dr. Jema Haji Mohamed, Dr. Mark Ollunga Odhiambo, and Dr. Francis Wambalaba. The authors thank Ken Harley, Dr. Gashaw Kebede, Dr. Cliff Lampe, and Liz Levy and for their very significant contributions to AgShare. The authors thank the Bill



& Melinda Gates Foundation for their generous funding and Khalid Bomba for helping to shape the initiative and Brady Walkinshaw for his tireless support.

VIII. REFERENCES 1. Geith, C., and Vignare, K. Access to Education with Online Learning and Open Educational

Resources: Can They Close the Gap? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) 12(1) (2008). http://www.distanceandaccesstoeducation.org/contents/JALN_v12n1_Geith.pdf.

2. Geith, C. Can OER Really Impact Higher Education and Human Development? (2008). http://www.oercommons.org/courses/christine-geith-can-oer-really-impact-higher-education-and- human-development.

3. Adipala, E., Ochola, W., Ekaya, W., Osiru, M., and Dhlamini, N. Capacity Development for Agricultural Transformation: Making Postgraduate Level Training Relevant to Africa’s Agricultural and Rural Sector Development. Paper presented to the Global Consortium on Higher Education and Research for Agriculture (GCHERA) Conference. Nairobi, Kenya. (2009).

4. Geith, C. Convening Notes. Unpublished results from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation convening on M.Sc. Agriculture Curriculums in Africa. Nairobi, Kenya. (2009).

5. Geith, C., and Kim, L. Lay of the Land of African Agriculture Open Educational Resources. Commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (2008).

6. Kebede, G. Interim Report for AgShare Planning and Pilot Project. Unpublished results. (2011). 7. Harley, K. AgShare Planning and Pilot Project Impact Study. (2012).

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/ id/39276/Default.aspx.

8. Vignare, K., Geith, C., Collins, B., and Weebadde, P. How Organizing Knowledge in Meaningful Ways Enhances Search and Supports Independent Learning. In Barriocanal, Cebeci, Okur, öztürk (Eds.), Metadata and Semantic Research 5th Internal Conference, Springer. (2011).

9. Vignare, K. Information & Communication Technologies Provide Strategies to Improve Pervasiveness of Extension (in Africa). Modernizing Advisory and Extension Service, a USAID grant-funded project. (2013). http://www.meas-extension.org/resources/ict.

10. Geith, C., Butcher, N., Vignare, K., et al. AgShare: Building Community and Content with Multiple Partners. In Open ED 2010 Proceedings. Barcelona: UOC, OU, BYU. (2010). http://hdl.handle.net/10609/4862.

11. Barlow-Zambodla, A., Dhlamini, N., and Vignare, K. AgShare Phase II Proposal. Unpublished. (2012).

IX. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Christine Geith, Ph.D., is assistant provost and executive director of Michigan State University MSUglobal Knowledge and Learning Innovations. She leads the development of new entrepreneurial approaches in higher education using educational technology, online learning, and open models. Recently, she’s worked with faculty to open up critical knowledge to help transform global food systems and agriculture. She was previously at Rochester Institute of Technology as co-director of the Educational Technology Center and director of Distance Learning. Christine has a Ph.D. from University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Karen Vignare, Ph.D., currently serves as associate provost, the Center for Innovation in Learning at University of Maryland University College, leading the search and evaluation for next generation learning models. Karen is responsible for implementing collaborative innovations, which may include prior learning, course design, analytics, adaptive learning, e-resources, open educational resources, instructional design changes, and competency based models. She was previous a director at MSUglobal at Michigan State University. MSUglobal is responsible for helping departments at Michigan State University integrate emerging technologies. She has a Ph.D. from Nova Southeastern University and an MBA from the University of Rochester’s William Simon School of Business.

http://www.distanceandaccesstoeducation.org/contents/JALN_v12n1_Geith.pdf

http://www.oercommons.org/courses/christine-geith-can-oer-really-impact-higher-education-and-

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/

http://www.meas-extension.org/resources/ict

http://hdl.handle.net/10609/4862




Using OER as a Tool for Agribusiness Management Training for Hard-to-reach Rural Farmer Populations

USING OER AS A TOOL FOR AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT TRAINING FOR HARD-TO- REACH RURAL FARMER POPULATIONS

Maina Muniafu, PhD School of Science and Technology, USIU

Francis Wambalaba, PhD Chandaria School of Business, USIU

Walter Wanyama School of Science and Technology, USIU

Gidraph Nduati School of Science and Technology, USIU

Dalton Ndirangu School of Science and Technology, USIU

ABSTRACT Agriculture is the mainstay of Kenya’s economy and contributes significantly to the gross domestic product. A great majority of this contribution comes from smallholder farmers who paradoxically face numerous obstacles ranging from a lack of support structures to poor policies and inadequate resources. A major challenge is assisting these farmers with making improvements in their production ventures, with the recently devolved form of government in Kenya enabling any assistance to be concentrated at a much lower and specific level within established counties. The United States International University (USIU) has been involved in the development of training materials for farmers and farmer organizations, specifically a course module based on several interdisciplinary field case studies. This farmers’ agribusiness training course was developed on an open educational resource (OER) platform to help both farmers, who had limited training in commercialization of agriculture, and farmer organizations. The intention of the course was to provide access to additional skills and knowledge, allowing farmers to move from a farm to a “firm.” Five farmers were identified from various parts of the country and participated in partnership with USIU faculty to develop the modules for the course over a one-year period. In order to complete these modules with the farmers, project staff frequently followed up with the farmers via field trips. The farmers provided positive feedback on the OER materials despite some challenges, such as the need for participants to be computer literate in order to utilize the materials directly. However, mobile learning presents an opportunity to address this shortcoming. Kenya has witnessed tremendous growth in the use of mobile phones in the rural population whose main occupation is agriculture. Although a few farmers were found to already be using a mobile SMS service to seek recommendations from the Ministry of Agriculture on the best agriculture practices and produce marketing, there is a need to establish whether mobile technologies can enhance farmers’ training and support in the rural communities.



KEYWORDS Agribusiness, open educational resources, Kenya, AgShare, agriculture smallholder entrepreneurship

A. Agriculture in Kenya I. INTRODUCTION

Agriculture is the mainstay of the Kenyan economy, directly contributing 26% and indirectly contributing another 25% of the gross domestic product annually. The sector accounts for 65% of Kenya’s total exports and provides more than 70% of informal employment in the rural areas. Therefore, the agricultural sector is not only the driver of Kenya’s economy, but also the means of livelihood for the majority of Kenyan people [2]. A major drawback, however (in terms of global scale), is the subsistence nature of production.

Firstly, as with many other sub-Saharan countries, a large majority of those involved in agriculture are small-scale farmers and production is carried out on farms averaging 0.2–3.0 ha, on a mixed subsistence/commercial basis. This small-scale production accounts for 75% of the total agricultural output and 70% of marketed agricultural produce. Small-scale farmers produce over 70% of maize, 65% of coffee, 50% of tea, 80% of milk, 85% of fish, and 70% of beef and beef-related products for output in Kenyan and external markets.

A huge potential exists to increase productivity for these farmers with the adoption of modern farming practices [2]. Adoption of improved inputs such as hybrid seeds, concentrated feeds, fertilizer, and safe uses of pesticides and machinery by small-scale farmers is relatively low. Farmers continue to rely on rain-fed production. This practice is in itself a severely limiting factor before considering other factors such as poor soils, pests, diseases, and recurrent drought.

Secondly, despite the presence of high-profile government ministries, government parastatals, and donor support, the grassroots farmer also suffers from a dire lack of support. Part of the support challenges came from the liberalization of the agricultural sector during the late 1980s. For example, limited investments in irrigation exist, and there is a lack of affordable technology to improve soil fertility, to control pests and diseases, to manage weeds, and to introduce drought-tolerant crop varieties. On top of all this, farmers have limited access to capital and infrastructure, including roads, railways, airports, and seaports, thus causing high transportation costs.

Thirdly, Kenya has undergone great demographic changes over the past half-decade with an eight-fold increase in population, having dramatic implications on landholding sizes, resource degradation and availability, and market availability for products, especially given the higher urbanization percentages. It is indeed questionable whether policy has developed in tandem with these changes. A unique feature of Kenya (unlike other sub-Saharan countries) is that all types of farmers, including poor, rich, large-scale, and smallholder farmers, participate in high-value agriculture products. Smallholder farmers, for example, produce 60% of all exported vegetables and fruits. These products, together with the traditional ones, have had a huge impact on the country’s economy through income flow into rural economies, increased market efficiencies, strengthened domestic supply chains, increased provision of employment opportunities, and improved institutional development. However, in the face of market liberalization in the agricultural sector, its overall performance has not been encouraging, with stagnation and even falling agricultural incomes. Much agricultural policy research, training, and advocacy work remains the responsibility of and relies on the involvement of all stakeholders, so that everyone involved in agriculture will be better off in the liberalized environment. Kenyan agriculture will hence be able to be efficient enough to compete at world prices or at the levels of protection that domestic consumers or the world trade organization allow.



B. Agricultural Extension Services Over time, the government has provided advice and services to farmers in what is termed extension services, with the ministry in charge of agriculture playing a leading role. Kenya’s smallholder farmers have traditionally benefited first from the government extension system and second from a commodity- based system run by government parastatals, out-grower companies, and cooperatives. The first system focuses mainly on food crops and livestock, including several models such as the progressive (or model) farmer approach, the farming systems approach, and the integrated agricultural rural development approach. They also provide farm management models, training and visits, attachment of officers to organizations, and farmer field schools. The second system deals mainly, but not exclusively, with commercial crops such as coffee, tea, pyrethrum, and sisal. This system is consciously motivated by profits, and it tends to work well when both the firm and farmers clearly benefit from the extension expenditures. All aspects of producing and marketing a particular commercial crop are tightly vertically coordinated, spanning the whole range from research, advice, and material support given to farmers in order to organize marketing and even exports [3]. But it is the lack of success of both of these extension service models that has given rise to private extension services from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations, and faith-based organizations [4]. Private extension services also give academic institutions, such as USIU, room to work with the farmers and farmer-based organizations.

II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT MODULES FOR FARMER ORGANIZATIONS

The development of the agribusiness management modules was based on several interdisciplinary field case studies, along with the provision of consultancy services to participating farmers as part of the AgShare open education resource (OER) project. The purpose of the study was to develop a pedagogical model and a pilot module for teaching farmer organizations, such as community-based organizations, to change their attitude, gain new knowledge, and acquire agribusiness-management skills for transforming farming from a livelihood practice to a business enterprise; in other words, transforming the farmer’s mindset to perceive a farm as a firm. The project involved research and consulting activities to cultivate a process of learning among all the three key stakeholders: faculty, students, and farmers. The project developed a pilot course module by combining concepts with regard to the structure of the agricultural sector and policies, context of the economics of a firm, behaviors of an entrepreneurial mind set, sustainable farming, and applications of information technology. The framework was based on five key outcome objectives as outlined below.

1. Form community-wide partnerships: The goal here was to enable and facilitate community-wide partnerships, networking opportunities to support the project’s vision, and an exploration of policy and strategy issues. These activities included partnerships with both farmer organizations and other relevant stakeholders (such as partnerships among USIU faculty and at least one university in Kenya with agriculture faculty), one producer organization, and one NGO involved in women’s rights and agricultural/rural development. The intent was to create arrangements for feedback loops among those partners for information sharing for OER development and use and re-use.

2. Build capacity: The framework was tailored to facilitate advanced business-management and organizational-skill development in farmers and producer organizations to increase their overall ability to transform members’ farming practices into a business enterprise. Similarly, in partnership with a local agriculture university (an AgShare partner), the module was to be used for training master’s-level students as a fieldwork seminar. This module included creating capacity for awareness of OER platforms, an understanding of packaging information, and using and re-using OER materials among all USIU AgShare project partners.



3. Create learning materials: The team worked in partnerships with Moi University to co-create an OER environment and associated learning materials. USIU faculty developed syllabus content, teaching and class activity content, and case studies for teaching. They also taught the course in collaboration with each other from an interdisciplinary perspective. USIU internship students participated in the module development and case-study process. They developed case study scenarios through interviewing and data collection, writing farmer stories, and capturing farmer experiences through film and pictures. The completed draft was shared with the AgShare partner universities for feedback, input, and possible adoption. All USIU AgShare project partners agreed on open access licensing of AgShare project materials. This was a noncredit module except that participants were to receive a certificate of completion.

4. Create an AgShare fellows program: The AgShare fellows program consisted of farmers, faculty, and students who championed the concept of OER within their respective universities. USIU coordinated with internship and community service programs to recruit student AgShare fellows who would capture local stories that could be used as illustrations, examples, and even case studies. Four students were recruited, including three USIU undergraduate students from journalism, entrepreneurship, and IT, as well as one agriculture master’s student from the AgShare partner university.

5. Assess the impact: During phase two of the project, the team embarked on project assessment with the dual quantitative and qualitative goals of determining the level of output, as well as the effects of the project. The output levels included assessing the level of partnership and networking; developing modules for farmer organizations; and generating a variety of OER materials (modules, cases, and video). Determination of impacts included the effect on farmers, the effect on faculty and students, and the desirability of using modules at universities.

Issues of sustainability and ethics were embedded in the modules. Agribusiness issues included green business development, sustainable supply chains, and a focus on the development of socially responsible ventures. The farmer organization issues also included concepts of green farming practices, carbon footprint minimization, economically sustainable planting and harvests methodologies, and sustainable and just labor practices. These issues and concerns were included through participating faculty’s selection of appropriate books, articles, case studies, experiential exercises, and facilitated discussions and lectures that make reference to sustainability and ethics or provide a format for use as an analytical tool.

III. ASSESSMENT OF OER IMPACT ON FARMERS

USIU worked to develop the modules with six farm communities in the regions of Athi River, Mwingi, Emali, Limuru, Nakuru, and Kapsabet. Each community was distinct in its history, purpose, and function. While USIU worked with those who were appointed by the groups or individuals considered change agents in the communities, the total number of farmers among all of those communities was nearly 10,000. The assessment varied amongst the groups. Some farmers participated in surveys, and in at least two cases, in- depth interviews were done with those farmers who were most engaged in the project. The nature and extent to which the farmers got involved with the university’s training program and employed the OER materials grew over time. They started off by providing information to faculty to develop case studies; afterwards, the farmers were provided with training on how to practice commercial farming as opposed to subsistence farming. Over time, the farmers managed to access farming and managerial information in terms of decision making regarding best farming practices, current farming trends, and finally, the feasibility of farming as a firm. The farmers agreed that the project team surpassed their expectations because of the knowledge the farmers gained. After reviewing the OER site and understanding that the information there is being



accessed worldwide, they were astonished to learn that the information they provided is also viewed all over the world, thus confirming that the training program has stretched far beyond their expectations. The farmers were able to learn a lot from the different modules and developed a clear understanding of the myriad of concepts that had been put forth in the program. They also understood what lacked in the production units and the way forward in making improvements. The farmers were also exposed to farming methods that differed from their own by interactions with other farmers. For example, animal husbandry was introduced to those practicing crop farming and vice versa. In terms of treating farming as a firm and not just a farm, this mindset empowered women to be able to develop some form of income through farming practices; therefore enabling them to also open bank accounts, access bank loans, and gain knowledge, especially about computers and farming information, to name only a few examples. The farmers felt involved in the development of case studies, which had a positive impact on them because they felt relevant and that their views mattered. It was opportunity for them to showcase their abilities and monitor their own progress. It was also noted that the OER program materials were a huge help, since government websites were not up-to-date on different farming methods. These OER materials have changed the way farmers run their farms, including the formation of support groups. Some farmers realized that individually, they may not be recognized. But as a group, not only can they can be registered, but they can also share information and ideas. A further positive element in achieving a farm-to-firm mindset was the farmers’ ability to structure their farming methods and increase their record keeping. The farmers made the changes with the AgShare team’s guidance and constant communication in the learning process. According to the USIU, farmers gained meaningful knowledge from the following AgShare modules:

• Module 1: Structure of Agricultural Sector and Policies • Module 2: Agribusiness Management For Farmer Organization • Module 3: Entrepreneurship Mindset • Module 4: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Support of Agriculture • Module 5: Sustainable Agriculture

The project involved students who were able to follow up on the farmers since their involvement in the AgShare project. The following are some of the key highlights regarding their post-project efforts with information technology:

• The evaluation results indicate that 75% of the farmers have invested in new ventures, including silage development, fish aquaculture projects, milk storage, generator and track shredder acquisitions, M-PESA (a mobile money-transfer solution), and motorbike transportation. Of the remaining 25 % of farmers, 16.7% are in the process of investing in new ventures, while 8.3% have not invested in any new venture. For new ventures, sources of funding for these investments include the nonprofit organization, TechnoServe; the Ministry of Agriculture; banks; and farmers’ personal savings.

• None of the farmers has visited the AgShare OER website after the project, mainly due to lack of computers and accessibility to the Internet.

• Communication has been maintained with farmers through farm visits, use of media, meetings during collection center morning deliveries, vernacular radio stations, television, workshops, seminars, exchange programs and practical sessions, churches, bulletins at county authority offices, information sharing during “harambees,” and schools. It can be noted that the communication involves a personal involvement of the program developers (faculty) along with other stakeholders who can bring about change beyond simply posting information on websites.

From the university’s perspective, it was important to quantify what the benefits were. The studies conducted during farm visits and data collection equipped the students with relevant skills and knowledge for future studies in related fields and provided a good avenue for exposure to the real-



world farming situation. The students’ attitudes towards farming had a positive change, and they gained more interest in the industry. Working as a team with the farmers helped empower the students as they gained more confidence in their work and their expertise. The faculty gained an appreciation of open source learning and are keener on information packaging for students. The interaction with farmers and the diversified collaborative work helped the faculty learn more from farmers and appreciate groundwork. This collaboration is likely to continue since all faculty were willing to share their expertise and recognized for their input. The AgShare stakeholders’ workshop took place at the United States International University. The main objectives of the workshop included the following:

1. Establish the relevance of the materials developed by the AgShare faculty of USIU, in essence covering all aspects of modern day agricultural principles and practices.

2. Determine the areas of collaboration by the stakeholders with regard to using the materials and incorporating them into the faculty’s respective institutions and organizations.

3. Ascertain the adaptability of the materials in the field of agriculture, especially when addressing agriculture in a developing country where many factors come into play; e.g., cultural dynamics, illiteracy, and an ever-changing technological world.

IV. RECOMMENDATIONS

Both teams of stakeholders highly praised the materials and had a variety of recommendations for multiple areas of collaboration.

1. The Ministry of Agriculture, represented by the Head of Trade Promotion, Mrs. Annastacia Kiio, proposed that the materials be included by the government on the Kilimo website for their promotion of the use of e-agriculture.

2. Moi University wished to incorporate the materials in their CMAAE master’s program as a graduate student tool for research and outreach delegation, which would be led by Professor Mark Odhiambo.

a. The university commended the materials for covering core aspects of day-to-day agricultural business in modern life, from learning about governmental policies to the economics of a firm in order to sustain output. The entrepreneurial perspective was believed to incorporate information technology in a way that would allow farmers to carry out a sustainable farming practice.

b. The materials were deemed relevant and the review was productive. Based on the interactions with faculty, students, and farmers, the USIU team is recommending the following improvements for the AgShare project.

1. Materials are to be translated into the national language, Kiswahili, and/or a mother tongue for the sake of the farmers who are not literate in English. This translation could also be extended to other national languages.

2. The team requires training support in order to convince other farmers to take advantage of the AgShare materials on the OER site.

3. Donations of more computers and computer training packages are needed. Regarding site maintenance, monthly website content updates and journal articles available for download are to be included. More pictorial demonstration will be developed and wording will be reduced.

4. Audio tapes will be distributed to farmers, along with a training manual/handbook. 5. More emphasis should be placed on ICT in agriculture as this will not only help the farmers to

obtain information from the Internet, but it will also open them up to a large pool of knowledge available on the World Wide Web. This access calls for intense periodic training and the likely establishment of computer hubs at selected trading centers and market towns.



6. More videos will be developed that focus on showcasing the improvements implemented by other farmers, which will create exposure for them and establish a potential farmer exchange program. For example, farmers in South Africa could send videos on their practices to farmers in Kenya and vice versa. It would also be an interactive platform in the exchange of ideas.

7. Scheduled visitations and exchange programs amongst the farmers are to be emphasized so that farmers can learn from one another in person. For example, the farmers from Bungoma will be sent to visit farmers in Tigania in June and July.

8. AgShare should open main resource centers in different strategic areas and have a contact person who will have access to firsthand information, relaying it to the AgShare farmers and faculty.

V. EXPANDING THE REACH OF AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT MODULES

One challenge of the developed modules is that farmers need to be computer literate and also have access to computers. While no data is available on computer literacy, it is safe to state that the literacy levels are higher in urban centers of Kenya, while levels will be low in rural areas, especially amongst the older generation of farmers who still are the majority. The emergence of new technologies has proven to be useful in many sectors such as business, healthcare, and agriculture. Information and communication technologies (ICT) can play an important role in addressing the challenges faced by community-based agricultural organizations. These challenges include the need to increase production to feed a growing and prosperous population as natural resources availability decreases (for example, decreases occur due to water shortages, declining soil fertility, effects of climate change, and a rapid decrease of fertile agricultural lands due to urbanization). Given all these challenges, the key participants in the country’s agricultural production system (mainly the rural agricultural community) require attention, with an important role of organizations such as USIU and its partners to bring together both private sector and organized farming groups through a common ICT platform. A possible end result of this collaboration will be that the livelihoods of the rural poor may improve. This improvement may occur because emerging ICT solutions have the potential to strengthen the connections among community-based organizations in rural agricultural, including enhancing capacity building and empowerment to the communities, enhancing agricultural production, and improving market access and relevant agricultural information in Kenya. One example of ICT use can be through mobile phones. According to the Communication Commission of Kenya [1], mobile phone subscribers in the country increased to 22 million between July and September 2010, with affordability being the key to past and expected growth. This growth means that through central connectivity, farmer organizations can access information from the modules relevant to production process improvements. Although it was found that a few farmers have been using mobile short message services (SMS) to seek assistance on the best agriculture practice and marketing of farm produce, there is a need to establish whether other mobile technologies like mobile mapping can enhance the farmers’ training and support. Such a study will seek to determine the need for mobile mapping technology as an alternative form of mobile support for rural population s. Local college students and agricultural government agents in their respective counties will be required to develop databases of agricultural best practices, policies, and marketing information of the locally produced goods. The database will be mapped and hosted in the respective county headquarters, and the results will be used by local farmers to improve agricultural activities. In this way, rural farmers will save travel time when seeking information and support regarding best practices. Local college students may develop a desire to work more in depth with farmers after participating in the development of the databases as well.

VI. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS The process of course development is in itself a research process that imparts learning experiences on developers, which are solidified by the consultancy outcome. These experiences are further enriched by not only a process of integrative learning, but also when the teacher, student, practitioner, and program participants work together to create knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes through research and



information exchange. For example, as farmers learned how to use the Internet as a tool, particularly for using AgShare OER materials, their farming methods were altered, especially with the introduction of computers. This process was a marked change from their experiences with agriculture-based NGOs and local government agencies. This project was thus a demonstration of the positive impact of the integrative and collaborative processes of learning. The assessment procedures also allowed for a measurement of the effectiveness of the module. Certainly, the enthusiasm of the farmers towards the material in the module served as an indicator of the need for packaging information in a way that is accessible to rural Kenya, the most effective platform likely exists through computer-based online programs, but given the current access challenges, mobile phone platforms may be an interim solution.

VII. REFERENCES

1. Communications Commission of Kenya. Quarterly Sector Statistics Report, 1st Quarter (July– Sept 2010/2011). http://www.cck.go.ke/news/2011/Mobile_subscribers.html

2. Agricultural Sector Development Strategy. Agricultural Sector Development Strategy, 2010– 2020. Government of Kenya. (2010). www.kilimo.go.ke

3. Muyanga, M, and Jayne, T.S. Agricultural Extension in Kenya: Practice and Policy Lessons Working Paper 26 (2006). Tegemeo Institute of Agricultural Policy and Development, Egerton University, Njoro, Kenya.

4. Nambiro, E., Omiti, J., and Mugunieri, L. Decentralisation and Access to Agricultural Extension Services in Kenya. SAGA Working Paper (October 2005).

VIII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Professor Maina Muniafu would like to express utmost gratitude to all the authors: Professor Francis Wambalaba, Professor Gidraph Nduati, Professor Dalton Ndirangu, and Professor Walter Wanyama, who assisted with and have worked through the process of this article. The authors would like to thank Michigan State University and OER Africa, who found them to be worthy partners in the AgShare grant, which was generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. USIU’s added entrepreneurial aspect to the AgShare program was a valued addition to the project’s success. Maina Muniafu, Francis Wambalaba, Gidraph Nduati, Walter Wanyama, Dalton Ndirangu, and Akosa Wambalaba are the module developers and case study research faculty at USIU. They were assisted by Mark Odhiambo of Moi University, a team of student interns, the Sustainable Development Initiatives Center (SUDIC) secretariat, OER Africa, and farmers from Emali, Kajiado, Kapsabet, Kiambu, Nakuru, Tigania, and Sikulu. The study was funded by Michigan State University’s AgShare project. The team is greatly indebted to USIU, the farmers, and the students who offered a lot of invaluable support towards the completion of this project. The team would like to sincerely thank all respondents; they are truly grateful to you.


Maina Muniafu is an associate professor of natural sciences, and his specialty areas are sustainable utilization and development of resources and general environment sciences. He is in the School of Humanities and is the founding director of the Sustainable Development Initiatives Centre. He has been involved in both the AgShare and the Agribusiness programs, whereby he has shared his expertise on sustainable agriculture and global agricultural market place and fundamentals for exports/imports, respectively. Francis Wambalaba is a professor of economics and deputy vice chancellor—Academic Affairs (Research), and his specialties are international economics, economic development, comparative economics, managerial economics, transportation economics, and planning and urban studies in regional structure.

http://www.cck.go.ke/news/2011/Mobile_subscribers.html

http://www.kilimo.go.ke/



Walter Wanyama is an assistant professor of information systems, and his specialty areas are information systems, information services, and management media technology and communication design. He worked together with Professor Dalton Ndirangu in teaching farmers how to computerize their records in the AgShare project. Gidraph Nduati is an assistant professor of marketing and his specialty areas are research projects, internship, and marketing in the Chandaria School of Business. He has been involved in the AgShare project, where he taught Mwalimu Njuguna about the entrepreneurial mindset, and he is happy to report that Mwalimu Njuguna now keeps records. Dalton Ndirangu is a professor of Computer Science at the National University of Science and Technology, and his specialty area is software engineering. He worked together with Professor Walter Wanyama in teaching farmers how to computerize their records in the AgShare project.



Creating Open Education Resources for Teaching and Community Development Through Action Research: An Overview of the Makerere AgShare Project


CREATING OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES FOR TEACHING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ACTION RESEARCH: AN OVERVIEW OF THE MAKERERE AGSHARE PROJECT

John B. Kaneene Michigan State University

Stevens Kisaka Makerere University

Paul Ssajjakambwe Makerere University RoseAnn Miller Michigan State University

John D. Kabasa

Makerere University

ABSTRACT The AgShare Phase I Program, conducted at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, was formed to create open education resources for teaching and community development through action research. The study was conducted by an interdisciplinary team of investigators from fields of veterinary medicine and agri-business. Two master of science students conducted dairy value chain action research that produced case materials used to create open education resources (OER) course modules (milk hygiene and marketing modules) and design interventions that would improve milk production, quality, and safety; reduce milk spoilage; increase price per liter of milk received by farmers; and support on-farm processing of yogurt and other dairy products. This research was used in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the master’s degree in Livestock Development, Planning, and Management (MLD) and the master’s degree in Agri-business Management (M Agbus Mgt) by these students. The conceptual design, implementation, monitoring, and impacts of action research on teaching, students learning, and the dairy industry are discussed in detail. KEY WORDS Open Education Resources; Action Research; Higher Education; Community Development; Dairy Value Chain; Milk Quality and Safety; Agri-business Management

A. Development Needs I. BACKGROUND

The Government of Uganda prioritized the agriculture sector in view of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals [1] and consequently identified the dairy industry as one of the top agro-economic sectors to be targeted for improvement. Dairying is one of the enterprises that farmers use to improve their standards of living. It is a developmental enterprise, as it widens and sustains major pathways out of poverty: securing assets for the poor, improving smallholder and pastoral productivity, and increasing market participation by the poor. In Uganda, the dairy industry contributes to about 50% of the total



livestock gross domestic product (GDP), which in turn contributes to nearly 20% of the total agricultural GDP [2]. At household levels, it provides a year-round source of income through the sale of animals and animal products in addition to replenishing soil fertility and improving food security. However, enormous challenges in the dairy industry remain as major barriers to achieving development goals in the agricultural sector. These challenges are largely centered on a lack of competencies among the farmers and of their advisors (i.e., extension staff and civic leaders). With 90% of milk production in Uganda marketed through informal channels, and with the adulteration of milk (e.g., surface water) reported as a common practice, the need for improved farming and marketing practices is evident.

B. Role of Education in Addressing Development Needs Throughout the last century, educational institutions have played a critical role in knowledge and technology transfer and sustainability in African societies. These efforts have put these institutions in a critical position for community development. However, the traditional “ivory tower” approaches to capacity building in Africa by these institutions are largely theoretical and classroom-based, with few evidence-based approaches to teaching the next generation of researchers, teachers, and policy makers. Such approaches to training are inadequate, and these graduates are not well prepared to solve societal challenges in the real world. Field-based case studies are unavailable for teaching, and research to generate new knowledge and technology are limited. The traditional model of classroom-based learning in many institutions in developing countries places emphasis on lectures and examinations, which results in academic staff considering themselves primarily as lecturers. This differs from the paradigm from universities in the United States, where active participation in research is a responsibility of the academic staff. In these institutions, academics consider themselves to be researchers, and they are able to tailor the content of their teaching materials to reflect new research and developments in their academic fields. This dynamic approach to course content makes the academic focus more on teaching new material rather than lecturing on existing (and often outdated) materials.

C. A New Approach–OER to Address Specific Development Needs in Uganda Recognizing the shortcomings of the current educational system in addressing agricultural develop ment needs in Uganda, the first phase of the Agriculture Sharing (AgShare) Program at Makerere University was developed. The goal of AgShare Phase I at Makerere University was to increase dairy production through improved knowledge and skills of stakeholders in all aspects of the dairy value chain. Under the AgShare vision, the model of education at the university level would be shifted from a didactic, lecture- based model to a teaching approach utilizing a continuously updated information loop system of real- world information. At the university level, this information loop would be based on action research conducted in the field in the areas of interest, assessment of results from action research, formulation of intervention strategies to address problems identified in the assessments, and development of open education resources (OER) and other educational resources for teaching students who would participate in action research, thereby completing the teaching cycle. An important aspect of the AgShare vision is that the dissemination of knowledge, skills, and services to stakeholder communities will also occur through the information loop system for OER-based research (figure 1). Community stakeholders will be active participants in the information loop by participating in action research to identify research needs and providing information and data for studies aimed at improving the performance of the dairy value chain. As intervention strategies are developed to address specific problems, stakeholders will receive training and assistance to implement these interventions, providing feedback on the success of these strategies to be used by researchers to improve future intervention strategies.



Figure 1.Cycles of OER development and use at the university and stakeholder levels under AgShare.

The feedback loop creates opportunities for ensuring that the educational materials being generated are applicable to real-world situations, and these materials will be constantly updated to meet the changing needs of the stakeholder communities. The training utilizes OER materials developed by university researchers for the AgShare stakeholder partners and will be made available to other interested stakeholders. Using graduate students as agents of change in the information loop between academia and stakeholders is a critical component of AgShare. Masters-level graduate students training under the AgShare Program would be actively involved in community engagement, participate in action research both in the field and at the university, provide educational materials to stakeholders, aid stakeholders in the implementation of interventions, and serve as a direct line of communication between stakeholders and academics. Res earch conducted by these students would be used for their masters-level theses, and their findings would be published in refereed scientific journals, which will further spread AgShare research beyond Makerere University and Uganda. The students’ direct involvement in stakeholder communities would help their



academic mentors to appreciate the diversity and dynamism of situations in the field, which would form opportunities for these students to become facilitators of change at both the university and in the field.

II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGSHARE PROGRAM AT MAKERERE UNIVERSITY

A. Partners in AgShare Phase I The goal of the first phase of AgShare was to improve the dairy value chain through utilization of OER using the Kiruhura District, located in southwestern Uganda, as a case study. AgShare Phase I was a collaborative effort between Makerere University (the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity (COVAB) and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), Michigan State University (the College of Veterinary Medicine and MSU Global Knowledge Innovations), and OER Africa. The project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Round 4.

B. The AgShare Approach The AgShare vision is to contribute to the development of healthier and wealthier livestock-based communities in Africa by disseminating knowledge, skills, and community service through an innovative information loop system for OER-based research, education, and knowledge. The AgShare mission is two-fold: (1) to develop teaching and learning materials for two OER modules in two master of science (MSc) degree programs at Makerere: a milk production and hygiene module for the masters in Livestock Development, Planning, and Management (MLD), and a management and marketing of milk and milk products module for the masters in Agri-business Management (M Agbus Mgt); and (2) to implement the use of OERs by different stakeholders along the dairy value chain. In line with the program’s mission, five objectives were identified for the first phase of AgShare at Makerere University: 1. Strengthen faculty and MSc student competencies in the utilization of OER approaches in the dairy

value chain. 2. Develop a plan for revising and creating OER-based milk hygiene and marketing modules for the

MLD and M Agbus Mgt. 3. Train MSc graduates capable of facilitating positive change in the dairy value chain. 4. Assess the impact of the AgShare multi-stakeholder information loop and OER on the dairy value

chain after a 12-month intervention period. 5. Conduct training and feedback sessions with model farmers, who will take the lead and share training

with other farmers, in a self-empowering community approach. Completion of these objectives would yield outputs in the university structure (a framework for the development of teaching modules using graduate students as agents of change in information loop systems between academia and outside stakeholders), university curricula (teaching modules based on field examples and feedback from multi-stakeholders through the information loop system), graduate students (MSc graduates trained in the development and use of OER curricula, using data from the baseline studies), and research (a list of indicators--from baseline studies--that can be used to demonstrate program effects on the dairy value chain; scholarly papers submitted to journals or published as proceedings for scientific conferences). In addition, Makerere faculty would be sensitized and re-oriented in OER approaches regarding the needs to address gaps in curriculum in the dairy value chain. Importantly, the targeted multi-stakeholder groups (e.g., farmers, community leaders) would also be empowered to engage as partners in OER learning to work to improve the performance of the dairy value chain.

http://www.msuglobal.com/



http://www.oerafrica.org/



C. IMPLEMENTATION OF AGSHARE PHASE I

1. Infrastructure and Planning at Makerere

a. At the University Level: The COVAB, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, College of Natural Resources, and the Department of Food Science and Technology were contacted to participate in the initial planning of the AgShare project. Opportunities were advertised for students to apply for graduate training at the master’s level within the framework of the AgShare project at Makerere University according to university guidelines. Several students were interviewed, and the top two were selected as the first AgShare student researchers.

b. In the Community: The AgShare team conducted meetings with the Kiruhura District’s administration, production office, and the National Agricultural Advisory Services Office to plan the most effective way of implementing AgShare training activities. The meeting was organized by district local council representative of the Kenshunga sub-county, the chairperson of the Ankole Dairy Products Cooperative Union, and academics from the Department of Agribusiness and Natural Resource Economics at Makerere. The meeting was attended by the chairperson of the Local Council Five (LC V), district local council representatives, the district production officer, and the Ankole Dairy Product Cooperative union chairperson. In this meeting, it was agreed that dairy farmers should be organized into marketing groups, and the district administration should intervene for the proper administration of these farmer organizations. The chairperson of the LC V promised to work out a plan with Makerere and meet with the president of the Republic of Uganda, a resident and farm owner in Kiruhura District, for additional information regarding the dairy sector and milk marketing.

2. Identifying Needs for Improving the Dairy Value Chain Through the Baseline Study Makerere, in collaboration with Michigan State University (MSU), conducted an analysis of the dairy value chain to identify specific needs to address in order to improve the performance of the dairy value chain from farm to table, and to document the indigenous skills and kno wledge of dairy value chain stakeholders in Uganda. The baseline study was conducted using two approaches: (1) focus group meetings were conducted with stakeholders along the entire dairy value chain and (2) visits to individual farmers to document the different milk marketing channels used to sell their milk and to assess the status of dairy farms in terms of milk productivity and on-farm milk processing. The major objective of the focus group discussions was to capture broader views of farmers, traders, a nd processors about the dairy value chain. During the discussions, traders, farmers, and processors were divided into two groups. In each group, a secretary recorded group contributions for given questions and then presented the group’s views in the plenary session for further discussion. The focus groups discussed several questions ranging from milk production, quality milk handling, on-farm milk processing, challenges facing processing, processing opportunities, as well as marketing of milk and processed dairy products like ghee, cream, and yogurt. It was through these focus group discussions that farmers, traders, and processors shared and exchanged their perceptions about opportunities, challenges, and the way forward in respect to dairy value chain improvement. In addition to the focus group meetings, the research and training team from Makerere visited individual dairy farms in the sub-counties of Kinoni, Keshunga, Kikatsi, and Rwemikoma in the Kiruhura District, using formal structured questionnaires to collect baseline data from each farm. The dairy farmers visited engaged in several dairy chain activities, including milk production, on-farm milk processing, and involvement in trading milk and dairy products. Farmers were divided into two categories: farmers that sold milk through the formal marketing channel and those that sold to the informal marketing channel. At the sub-county level, paired matched sampling was used to select farmers from each category for



participation in the AgShare intervention program: 60 farmers were interviewed in each sub-county for a total sample of 240 farmers.

3. Developing the Information Loops

a. The Action Research–Results–Interventions Loop for Makerere University The action research–results–interventions information loop at Makerere University involves (a) action research directed at the dairy value chain conducted by university faculty and graduate students; (b) interpretation of results from action research into materials for use in OERs for student training; and (c) development of interventions based on the results of action research to effect positive changes to the dairy value chain (figure 1). Interventions include specific activities or programs to use on participating farms and educational materials for stakeholders that will be provided as OERs. To initiate the information loop at the university, researchers from Makerere and MSU used the findings from analyses of the baseline data to develop educational modules to add to the curricula there and to create training materials for dairy value chain stakeholders (farmers and traders). The training materials were focused on knowledge sharing, covering the improvement of dairy farm management and productivity, quality milk handling, on-farm milk processing, and strategic milk and dairy product marketing.

b. Graduate Students as Links Between University and Stakeholder Information Loops The MSc students were instrumental as links between the university and stakeholder information loops. These students were engaged in action research, including data collection through participation in the focus group meetings, through the administration of questionnaires during the field visit interviews with dairy farmers, and through the collection of biological samples to determine the quality and safety of milk as well as the existence of cattle diseases that would affect those attributes of the milk. After data collection and laboratory analysis of biological samples, the students worked with faculty researchers at Makerere to develop on-farm interventions for farmers, OER training modules for the university, and OER training modules for stakeholders. Once these modules were developed, the MSc students delivered the training materials to the farmers and assisted them in the implementation of interventions on their farms. The interventions consisted of information packages on methods to improve the milk production, quality, and safety; decrease milk spoilage; increase value addition to their dairy production (e.g., increasing yogurt production); and increase the marketability of milk and milk products. During the 12 - month course of the intervention period, the students made monthly visits to each farm to monitor the effectiveness of interventions, address questions and concerns from the farmers and other stakeholders, and provide updates and additions to the stakeholder training modules as soon as new information was available through the university information loop.

c. The Education–Interventions–Assessment Loop for Stakeholders After the development of interventions and training materials at the university level, AgShare researchers conducted training sessions with participating farmers. The overall goal of the training program was to share knowledge and skills with dairy value chain stakeholders and contribute to the indigenous knowledge and skills. AgShare would contribute to the improved efficiency of the dairy value chain through knowledge, skill, and community service exchange between dairy farmers and Makerere University. With the help of the chairperson of the Kiruhura dairy farmers’ association, milk producers, processors, and traders were organized and two training workshops were developed for each of the three major stakeholder groups (milk producers, on-farm milk processors, and milk traders). These training workshops were conducted in collaboration with the Dairy Development Authority (DDA), East African Dairy Development (EADD), and a dairy business development service provider (BDS). It was anticipated that trained farmers and traders would soon be registered with the DDA since the training would be conducted in collaboration with the DDA and EADD.



The first two-day-long training session strove to document the indigenous skills and knowledge of dairy chain stakeholders; to develop and share an integrated knowledge and skills with stakeholders that could lead to efficiency of the chain; to equip dairy farmers with functional farm management, milk handling practices, and appropriate on-farm milk technologies; and to expose farmers, traders, and processors to strategic milk marketing and management. Specific focus was given to quality milk production, handling and processing, as well as equipping dairy farmers doing on-farm milk processing with appropriate technologies for processing milk products. The second workshop, also two days in length, was to disseminate study results to stakeholders and collect feedback from stakeholders regarding the performance of AgShare interventions (stakeholder education and milk processing technology) for their needs. The trainees were awarded certification by the Department of Agribusiness and Natural Resource Economics in collaboration with the Uganda Dairy Development Authority and the East African Dairy Development’s Business Development Service. The awarded certificates authorizes trainees to check for milk quality, advise other stakeholders involved in the dairy value chain, and take legal actions in situations of improper milk handling by actors in the dairy value chain. After implementation of interventions and trainings, researchers returned to the farms to determine the effectiveness of the AgShare approach in terms of positive impacts on individual stakeholders and the dairy value chain as a whole. Two surveys were conducted to capture project impact on farmers in terms of attitude, knowledge, skills, and behavior: modifying attitudes drives behavior (knowledge and skills count for little if the appropriate attitudes are not in place); imparting knowledge to stakeholders allows them to develop better-informed management strategies to improve their component of the dairy value chain; developing skills creates better management of production and marketing; and changing behaviors utilizes the knowledge and skills stakeholders gained through participation in AgShare. An agricultural expert with extensive relevant experience was contracted to compile a dairy-specific questionnaire, and the survey instrument was modified by Makerere University staff based on their working knowledge of which questions would be most applicable to the farmers in the AgShare Program. The MSc students, under the supervision of Makerere University faculty, administered both surveys through in -person interviews. Results from this assessment were then used to direct action research at the university level to further improve performance of the dairy value chain.

4. Assessing the Impact of AgShare The impacts of AgShare at the university (teaching and learning), in the community (project acceptance), and the dairy enterprise of participating farmers were assessed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative assessments were conducted by an independent consultant (Ken Harley, University of Pretoria) and relied on participants’ accounts of their own before-and-after AgShare experiences. These accounts were collected through on-site interviews that took place at the end of the 12-month intervention period. The quantitative assessments were conducted by AgShare researchers at MSU and Makerere University. To assess the impact of the AgShare approach on teaching and learning, an independent consultant conducted in-person interviews of academic staff and students. During interviews, academic staff and students were invited to comment, in an open-ended way, on their experiences of using the new OER. Notes were taken to record responses, with as many key utterances as possible recorded as quotes. To evaluate the acceptance of the AgShare program in the community, qualitative assessments were made by the independent consultant based on in-person interviews of extension agents, field veterinarians, farmers, milk processors, and milk buyers. Open-ended responses were collected from stakeholders to capture their experiences working with AgShare researchers, the presentation and quality of educational materials provided by AgShare, and the interventions developed by AgShare to improve different aspects of the dairy value chain. In addition, extension agents, field veterinarians, milk processors, and milk buyers were asked to comment on how AgShare training influenced participating farmers and how effective



AgShare training and interventions were in improving farm milk production and quality. Again, notes were taken to record responses, with as many key utterances as possible recorded as quotes. The quantitative assessments of the impact of AgShare were conducted by AgShare scientists and graduate students, and included the comparison of different indicators measured at the beginning and end of the 12-month intervention period. These indicators included measures of milk quality and safety (somatic cell count, presence of harmful bacteria), cattle diseases that affect production and milk quality (mastitis and brucellosis), level of milk production per cow, farm hygiene, quantities of milk discarded due to spoilage, quantities of milk used for producing other dairy products (ghee, yogurt), and prices received for milk and other dairy products. Results from the quantitative assessments are being prepared for publication in refereed scientific journals, and parts of these assessments were used by the graduate students in their research dissertations.

III. RESULTS

A. Impact of AgShare at University and Stakeholder Communities

1. OER-based Training of MSc Students The two MSc students pursued different research programs in their participation of the AgShare Program. These students brought key benefits to the project as “drivers” of the on-farm case studies used for development of OER content. The first student conducted action research leading to an MSc degree in Livestock Development, offered by the COVAB. This student collected case material that was used to develop an OER course module in milk hygiene and safety. The second student conducted action research leading to an MSc degree in Agribusiness Management, offered by the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, and collected case material that was used to develop an OER course module in dairy agri-business. Both course modules are available on the OER Africa website (http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/AgShareHome/tabid/1290/Default.aspx).

2. Graduate Student Involvement in AgShare and OER Development The merits of apprenticeship in research are widely acknowledged in the academic world but very seldom practiced because of constraints of time and staff/student ratios, and by working in the field with experienced researchers, the AgShare student-researchers affirmed the value of their apprenticeships. The student-researchers also gained experience in developing teaching materials for a diverse audience as well as in developing content for formal publications other than their theses. In addition, the student- researchers stressed ways in which their personal skills and growth had been enhanced, including learning to access OER and other resources; increasing confidence in their interviewing and writing skills; developing social skills in dealing with stakeholders; and learning to work in a team.

3. Institutionalization of OER at Makerere University and Other Universities As other investigators have reported [3, 4], OER offers opportunities and challenges in higher education. At present, the use of OERs is viewed as a powerful teaching tool and as a generator of opportunities for research and education at Makerere University. Eight faculty members not involved in the project at Makerere University were interviewed individually for their opinions about AgShare and the use of OER, and after seeing AgShare in action, four academic staff members reported having already begun developing their own OER. While Makerere has promoted OER in the dairy value chain pilot across several departments and at the other AgShare universities, the general view of the other AgShare institutions was that impact assessment of the institutionalization of OERs was premature at this time.

4. Community Stakeholders and AgShare The AgShare team at Makerere trained a total of 42 dairy value chain stakeholders in the Kiruhura District. Among the 42 trainees, 32 were dairy farmers that were both milk producers and on-farms processors, and 10 were traders dealing in the marketing of milk (processors, operators of milk collection centers, and bike milk vendors). Almost half of the trainees were recruited through the Amate Gaitu

http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/

http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/

http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare/AgShareHome/tabid/1290/Default.aspx)



Cooperative or by the AgShare project officer, and the remainder were recruited by friends or family members, the local village chief, or local veterinarians. Over 90% of trainees hoped to learn more about dairy production systems through AgShare training, with the balance hoping to learn more about ways of adding value to the commodity. A workshop to disseminate survey results to stakeholders was attended by dairy farmers, milk traders, and local government staff. The workshop highlighted the performance of their farms, challenges faced, current opportunities, and strategy development to move forward in regard to improving dairy value chain efficiency. In the workshop, both farmers and traders reached consensus that farmers need to be organized to benefit from dairying, resulting in the formation of a dairy farmers’ marketing organization. Although just over half of the participating stakeholders had been positive about the dairy project at its inception, all gave overwhelmingly positive feedback at its conclusion: one of the workshop moderators noted “There was an overwhelmingly positive feedback about the impact of the stakeholder meetings, with all respondents indicating that they benefitted from these sessions.” In addition to the workshops, on-farm interview sessions were conducted to capture project effect on farmers. The interviews were designed to measure impact in terms of stakeholder attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Stakeholders indicated that AgShare promoted many new attitudes that imbued farmers with a sense of “liberation and fulfillment.” Their views mattered, and they felt affirmed. The shift to market-orientation—the farm as a business—was a fundamental shift that enabled other project impacts. There was a new awareness and openness in relation to what technology offers and a realization of the power of farm management. New forms of knowledge were evident in the power of choice (e.g., the relationship between value of the product and quantity); knowledge of systems (e.g., the leverage of collective action); farm management (e.g., record keeping and costing); primary production (e.g., ways of increasing yields); and the effects of government policy. Clear accounts were given of new production and farm management skills. Record keeping was a key new skill as it provides a solid foundation for decision-making. For several farmers, behaviors changed as they applied their new knowledge and skills, and AgShare was a life-changing experience: the greatest impact of AgShare was made in changing their farming paradigm “from farm to firm.” Other comments indicated that most farmers indicated that they had actually applied what they learned to their individual farm businesses, and seen benefit from these lessons. All respondents reported benefiting from the one-on-one feedback sessions for laboratory reports of disease status of their dairy herd. There was ample evidence that stakeholder attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors had been positively impacted by participation in AgShare. One finding was that the formation of farmers’ cooperative unions depended heavily on levels of formal education, dominant market players, and farmers’ socio-economic and dairy characteristics. Dairy farmers that sold milk through cooperatives were economically better off in terms milk volumes, herd size, dairy, and farm management practices than their counterparts. AgShare training helped motivate farmers with no formal education to participate in cooperative unions, improving their future prospects. Additionally, the AgShare studies demonstrated that dairy farmers had functional traditional knowledge and skills regarding value addition, primarily in the production of ghee and fermented yogurt on their farms. Armed with this knowledge, interventions were positioned to integrate modern processing practices in ghee and yogurt production to improve the quality and quantity of the on- farm production. In particular, the processing of ghee was a tradition and was regarded as a women’s activity; improvements to on-farm ghee production would improve the contributions of women to farm income and their status in the dairy and agricultural industry. The quantitative assessment of the impact of interventions through the education-intervention-assessment information loop found that AgShare training highly influenced farmers. AgShare researchers identified this directly through farmer interviews, and this was confirmed by observations from extension agents, field veterinarians, milk processors, and milk buyers. These findings were reinforced by anecdotal evidence provided by academics and student-researchers during the independent consultant’s site visits for the external impact assessment of AgShare. For example, farmers benefitted by moving into value- added milk products: while profits on a liter of milk averaged 200 Uganda shillings, profits rose to 600–



800 Uganda shillings when the milk was used to produce yogurt. One farmer was so grateful for this increase in profits that he rewarded a student-researcher who had helped him write successful business plans with a generous gift of two cows. All trained milk producers, processors, and traders had a strong willingness to adopt new technologies (production and processing) and new marketing strategies as a result of AgShare, which suggests that dairy farmers have wanted but had not been receiving such functional skill-oriented training.

5. Impacts on the Dairy Value Chain Almost 92% of all respondents who participated in the project indicated that it was beneficial; all reported improvements in their dairy production systems. Preliminary assessments have indicated improvement in milk quality (as determined by lower total somatic cell count), milk safety (as measured by the prevalence of mastitis and brucellosis), reduced spoilage of milk, and higher prices received for milk and yogurt for farmers who took part in the AgShare Program. The AgShare training interventions in Kiruhura dairy chain led to the strengthening of already existing farmers’ cooperative unions. The cooperatives that benefited from the project were Amate Gaitu, the Ankole Dairy Products Cooperative, and the Kazo Dairy Products Cooperative Union. The trained farmers, processors, and traders also formed a new cooperative whose objective was to streamline milk and dairy products marketing with the establishment of a strong understanding between all stakeholders. AgShare also established strong collaborations with the district Executive, Production, and Agricultural Advisory Offices, the Uganda Dairy Development Authority, and East African Dairy Development and Business Development Service providers. During AgShare meetings with these dairy stakeholders, it was agreed that suitable dairy policies needed to be put in place to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the dairy value chain. The meeting concluded that a proper program discussed with the president of the Republic of Uganda would be developed for policy streamlining, effective implementation of AgShare activities, and seeking additional funding for these initiatives.

B. Effects of Institutionalization of the AgShare Model

1. OER as a Means of Meeting Education Needs Universities participating in AgShare are no different from other institutions experiencing the pressures of increased student numbers in the face of diminishing government subsidies with attendant resource constraints. Staff in the AgShare pilots reported increased interest by university management and the national government in promoting “distance” learning, with awareness that such initiatives would need to be underpinned by materials development. The AgShare model for development of OER learning materials is being held up as the example for broader initiatives to emulate. While this might be a case of OER appeal at an instrumental or even at a reactive level, there were definite indications that other institutions in the region are viewing the AgShare model in more proactive ways. In addition, the cost of higher education has been on the rise globally. As more universities adapt OER, the cost of higher education can be reduced [6], which will be particularly welcome news in developing countries.

2. OER as a Way of Re-positioning the University University mission statements are typically developed around the pillars of research, teaching, and community development, often supporting the stereotypical “ivory tower.” AgShare provides a model founded on field-based research carried out by staff and students, with research serving the dual purpose of supporting research-based teaching and delivering improved field practice back to the farming community. Makerere has gone beyond the potential of the AgShare model in the COVAB while the university was pressured from the outside and troubled by serious internal doubts about its relevance; AgShare arrived as a model that anchored academic excellence in transformation of the community. AgShare has the structural elements of a community of practice [7], which differs from a project team in significant ways. A conventional project team is driven by deliverables with shared goals and milestones, and it is dissolved once its mission is accomplished. In contrast, a community of practice is often



organically created: memberships may change, and members may take on new roles within the community as interests and needs arise. The dynamic capacity of the AgShare community of practice allowed the program to adapt to changing needs of both the university and the stakeholder communities. As such, AgShare became seen as “The Model” to make the university relevant to society—locally, regionally, and nationally. While Makerere University was already inclined towards a more relevant developmental posture prior to AgShare, AgShare funding helped actualize the vision and provided the conceptual model for cooperation. This vision has been institutionalized in AFRISA (Africa Institute for Strategic Animal Resource Services and Development). Funded by the Republic of Uganda Ministries of Education and Agriculture and approved by the Makerere University Council, AFRISA provides a “platform of training and research to innovation actors in animal resource sector” that moves education from the ivory tower to the Academic-Community-Public-Private Partnership (ACP3) model. Courses offered on the AFRISA website include certificates for Basic and Professional Skills; diploma, bachelor’s degree, and master’s degree programs; and postgraduate courses. In the dairy value chain, skills certificates are offered in ice cream production, yogurt production, butter and ghee production, artificial insemination techniques, farm information and records management, and small-holder milk production and marketing. With several other projects and funders listed on the AFRISA home page, it is important to recognize the significant contribution of AgShare. As the dean of COVAB stated in the AgShare impact assessment report to the Gates Foundation [7], “AgShare was the seed which kept producing more seeds,” including AFRISA.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

The AgShare approach at Makerere University, using action research in continuously-updated information loops of real-world data and information for teaching and the development of OER for university and stakeholder education, has been unique in that its impact has been achieved across a range of stakeholders. The program has shown important benefits to those involved in teaching and learning about the dairy value chain at the university and in communities, to those engaged in production, processing, and marketing of milk and other dairy products. The action research model of training graduate students is gaining support at Makerere University as a whole, and the dynamic creation of curricula using OER modules is likely to be the future of this university.

V. REFERENCES

1. Rosegrant, M.W., Ringler, C., Benson, T., Diao, X., Resnick, D., Thurlow, J., Torero, M., and Orden, D. Agriculture and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Report 32729-GLB. http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/AgMDG.pdf.

2. Mubiru, S.L., Tenywa, J.S., Halberg, N., Romney, D., Nanyeenya, W., Baltenweek, I., and Staal, S. Categorization of the Dairy Production Systems: A Strategy for Targeting Meaningful Development of the Systems in Uganda. Livestock Research for Rural Development, 19(7) (2007).

3. Atkins, D.E., Brown, J.S., and Hammond, A.L. A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2007). http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdf.

4. Yuan, L., MacNeill, S., and Kraan, W. Open Educational Resources—Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education (2008). http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/0/0b/OER_Briefing_Paper.pdf.

5. Wenger, E. Communities of practice a brief introduction (2006). http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm.

http://www.afrisa-africa.org/aboutafrisa.html/

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/AgMDG.pdf

http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdf

http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/0/0b/OER_Briefing_Paper.pdf

http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm



6. Wiley, D. On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education. (2006). http://www1.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38645447.pdf.

7. Harley, K. AgShare Planning and Pilot Project Impact Study (2012). http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/ id/39276/Default.aspx.


The activities of the AgShare Program reported here were supported by funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—Grand Challenge 4. The authors would also like to thank the following institutions and individuals for their contributions to the project: Makerere University, AFRISA (African Institute for Strategic Animal Resource Services and Development), the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, College of Natural Resources, and the Department of Food Science and Technology; Michigan State University—College of Veterinary Medicine, Christine Geith and Karen Vignare of the MSU Global Initiative; Neil Butcher of OER Africa; SAIDE (South African Institute for Distance Education); and Ken Harley, University of Pretoria.

VII. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John B. Kaneene is a University Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Comparative Epidemiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University, USA. Stevens Kisaka is an assistant lecturer in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda. Paul Ssajjakambwe is an assistant lecturer in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda. RoseAnn Miller is a research assistant in the Center for Comparative Epidemiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University, USA. John D. Kabasa is a professor and principal of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda.

http://www1.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38645447.pdf

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/id/39276/Default.aspx

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/id/39276/Default.aspx

Creating Open Education Resources for Teaching and Community Development through Action Research: The Milk Production and Hygiene Module


CREATING OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES FOR TEACHING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH ACTION RESEARCH: THE MILK PRODUCTION AND HYGIENE MODULE

Paul Ssajjakambwe Makerere University

Stevens Kisaka Makerere University

Christopher Setumba Makerere University Gloria Bahizi Makerere University

Patrick Vudriko Makerere University

John B. Kaneene

John D. Kabasa Makerere University

ABSTRACT Michigan State University

One of the cornerstones of the AgShare program is the application of an information loop of action research in the training of graduate students to generate new and practical educational materials and interventions for creating open education research (OER) modules for teaching at universities, and for designing interventions and training programs for making improvements in the dairy value chain in Uganda. One major output of the action research project was the generation of data for use in partial fulfillment of a master of science in Agribusiness and a master of science in Livestock Development, Planning, and Management by participating students. A milk production and hygiene OER module was developed based on components in milk safety, dairy policy, contaminants in milk and dairy products, quality assurance, and dairy planning and management. The OER module was incorporated into an existing graduate-level course at Makerere University. As the AgShare approach continuously updates educational materials through the information loop, this program ensures that university training of students is applicable to the current needs of the dairy industry. KEY WORDS Open Education Resources; Action Research; Service Learning; Dairy Value Chain; Milk Hygiene; Milk Quality

I. BACKGROUND

Ugandan communities need the assistance of trained professionals to improve milk production per cow, product hygiene and safety, transportation, and marketing aspects of milk and milk products. Knowledge and skills in the use of value chain analysis, with dynamic feedback mechanisms that expedite the flow of information between stakeholders (e.g., universities, farmers, milk processors, civic leaders), are required by university graduates and communities seeking to have positive impacts on the Ugandan dairy industry. The College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Biosecurity (COVAB), and the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences of Makerere University (MAK), in partnership with Michigan State University (MSU) and OER Africa, conducted research and trained students in topics relating to the dairy value chain through the AgShare Program [1]. Research and training was conducted under the first



phase of AgShare, and resulted in the development of OER-based service learning modules and materials that provide needed information in making improvements in the dairy value chain in Uganda. Two OER modules were developed to address educational needs for improvement of the dairy value chain under AgShare Phase I at Makerere University. The modules consisted of milk production and hygiene, developed under the COVAB, and the management and marketing of milk and milk products, developed under the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. The milk production and hygiene module will be the focus of this paper; the management and marketing of milk and milk products module will be reported in another paper.

II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE MILK PRODUCTION AND HYGIENE OER MODULE

One of the important components of the AgShare Program is the use of dynamic information loops for OER-based action research: results of action research are analyzed and used to design interventions to address issues and create educational materials for stakeholders and students. The interventions and educational materials are provided to stakeholders, and action research is used to determine the effects of the interventions and educational materials on the issues they were designed to affect. This approach ensures that educational materials are current and constantly updated, making them more useful for training students than reliance on conventional texts and other educational materials that may be years old, or are based on information from regions and cultures that may have little or no relevance to the communities these students will serve. To develop the OER learning modules, the project identified and trained two graduate students to function as agents of change in the information loop between academia and stakeholders. The students actively participated in all aspects of action research, including the collection of baseline data to document the status of the dairy value chain, the analysis of data for identification of factors that could be changed to improve performance across the dairy value chain, the design and implementation of interventions for improving the dairy value chain, the determination of intervention influence, and the development of educational materials for the OER based on case materials. The students’ experiences in AgShare contributed to meeting the requirements for a master’s degree in Livestock Development, Planning, and Management (MSc) or a master’s degree in Agribusiness and Management (M Agbus Mgt).

A. Collection and Assessment of Baseline Data Baseline information on milk production and hygiene in the Uganda dairy value chain was needed to initiate the information loop process. The baseline information consisted of the following items:

• Qualitative characterization of the dairy value chain was completed in the study area (Kiruhura District), including the characteristics of dairy farms; milk production and production costs; milk consumption; on-farm milk processing; milk marketing; and constraints to dairy production and marketing in the area.

• Quantitative assessment of milk production, hygiene, and quality on farms participating with the AgShare program was also performed in the study area.

Information was collected through three venues: focus group discussions, farm visits for collection of data on the dairy value chain, and farm visits to select farms for collection of biological samples to assess milk quality and safety. After analysis of this information, educational materials and interventions were developed by the AgShare researchers, which were provided to stakeholders through training workshops and demonstrations. After the 12-month intervention period, collection of the same qualitative and quantitative data was repeated on the AgShare farms to allow for evaluation of the effectiveness of the interventions in the community.

1. Dairy Value Chain Data Collection—Focus Group Discussions AgShare researchers, including MAK faculty and the MSc student researchers, convened with different



stakeholder groups in three focus group meetings to share and exchange perceptions about the challenges and opportunities in the current dairy value chain. They also discussed and planned strategies for improving the dairy value chain (figure 1). The focus groups discussed several questions ranging from milk production, quality milk handling, on-farm milk processing, challenges facing processing, processing opportunities, as well as the marketing of milk and processed dairy products like ghee, cream, and yogurt. The MSc student researchers were involved in planning the meetings, contacting and enlisting members of different stakeholder groups for participation, and guiding discussion during the meetings. Information from the meetings was collected by secretary notes, photographs, and video recording of the discussions. After the focus group meetings, the student researchers and MAK faculty researchers compiled the results of the discussions for use in the baseline data study and prepared reports of the results for the stakeholders.

Figure 1. Stakeholder focus group discussion lead by an AgShare MSc student.

2. Dairy Value Chain Data Collection—Farm Visits Farm visits were conducted to assess the status of individual dairy farms in the AgShare study area (figure 2). In the study area (Kiruhura District), four sub-counties were selected for the study (Kinoni, Keshunga, Kikatsi, and Rwemikoma), and a paired matched sampling method was used within each sub-county to select farmers for participation in this study. Approximately 60 farmers were interviewed from each sub- county, and a total of 236 farmers participated in the farm visits. Structured questionnaires were administered by MSc student researchers to every farmer in order to collect information regarding the farm’s milk production, milk quality, on-farm milk processing, and different channels for selling milk.

Figure 2. Farm visit interview conducted by an AgShare student.

3. Milk Production, Hygiene Data, and Sample Collection—Farm Visits Farm visits were made to 12 farms for an action research study to determine the prevalence of two important diseases of dairy cattle (mastitis and brucellosis) and levels of hygiene on these farms. Mastitis and brucellosis were selected due to their public health impact, and the widespread prevalence of these



diseases in cattle. Six farms were selected by their participation in the Amate Gaitu Cooperative; six other farms with a history of high levels of brucellosis were randomly selected by the sub-county veterinarian [2]. The student researchers were involved in contacting and interviewing study farmers, collecting blood and milk samples, conducting laboratory tests for mastitis and brucellosis (figure 3), observing and recording farm hygiene scores, and providing educational materials and training to the 12 participating farms.

Figure 3. Laboratory testing completed by an AgShare faculty and student.

4. Analysis and Reports of Dairy Value Chain Data Information from focus group meetings and farm visits was compiled and summarized to provide a description of the dairy value chain in the Kiruhura District. Data were gathered on the dairy farm cattle breeds, types of on-farm dairy processing, farmers’ primary milk buyers, costs of dairy production per farm, and lists of constraints to milk production (e.g., veterinary drug costs, animal diseases) and milk marketing (e.g., high transportation costs, poor infrastructure, such as poor roads and lack of electrification). These data were used by MAK researchers to formulate interventions to overcome some of the milk production and marketing constraints (e.g., educating farmers in the value of cooperative unions to receive better prices for their milk). After the analyses were completed, the AgShare team, including the student researchers, held a two-day workshop to disseminate the survey results in the Kiruhura District. This workshop was attended by dairy farmers, milk traders, and local government staff. The major aim of the workshop was to disseminate research findings to dairy farmers, highlighting the performance of and challenges faced by their farms, the current opportunities to be exploited, and to forge the way forward with regards to improving dairy value chain efficiency. In the workshop, both farmers and traders reached consensus that farmers need to be organized if they are to benefit from dairying: the formation of a dairy farmers’ marketing organization was discussed. Information from the dairy value chain analysis was used as the foundation for a separate training workshop for dairy farmers, traders, and milk processors. The objectives of the training workshop were to share knowledge and skills on quality milk production, handling, and processing; equip dairy farmers, especially those doing on-farm processing, with appropriate technologies for processing milk products; and expose farmers, traders, and processors to strategic milk marketing strategies. Trainees were awarded certification by the Department of Agribusiness and Natural Resource Economics in collaboration with the Uganda Dairy Development Authority. The certificates authorized all the trainees to check for milk quality, provide advice to other stakeholders in the dairy value chain, and take legal action when proper milk processing and handling practices were not being followed.

5. Analysis and Reports of Milk Production and Hygiene Data For samples collected at the beginning of the study (baseline data) and at the end of the intervention period, the laboratory results for the existence of mastitis and brucellosis were used to estimate the prevalence of these diseases in the study area’s dairy cattle. The prevalence of each disease was reported



for each sub-county and for each dairy herd. Hygiene was also analyzed by applying a five-point score (with 0 = poor, 4 = excellent) to reflect the level of hygiene on the farm. This score was based on the researchers’ evaluation of the cleanliness of animals, animal facilities, milking facilities, milking equipment, cow udders before milking, and the personal hygiene of the milkers. The hygienic quality of milk was evaluated by the use of sieves to filter milk before storage and shipping, and the somatic cell count of the milk (an indicator of inflammation/infection in the udder). Hygiene scores were calculated for each farm, and aggregate hygiene scores were generated for each sub-county. These findings were included in the Brucellosis and Mastitis Herd & Milk Cleanness Score Card, a summary of the baseline study prepared by the COVAB (available at the OER Africa AgShare website). The quantitative results of this assessment gauged the progress of dairy farmers receiving AgShare training and interventions: comparisons of disease levels and hygiene on farms before and after training/intervention were made to determine the effectiveness of different interventions or training programs on farmers. Findings from these analyses are being prepared by the MSc students and MAK faculty for publication in refereed scientific journals. Information from the baseline analysis was also used by the AgShare team to provide dairy farmers, processors, and traders with practical lessons on various dairy value chain aspects, such as the quality of milk handling, lactometer tests, and milk processing. Among these lessons were demonstrations that taught farmers how to maintain milk quality on the farm and in transfer to milk collection centers. Dairy farmers were also taught how to prepare quality yogurt for both home consumption and market sale by pasteurizing milk and applying indirect heating. These lessons not only assisted the farmers, but also taught the MSc students critical interpersonal skills and effective teaching strategies that can be applied to future client collaboration. Further, these lessons yielded clear changes in stakeholder activities, which improved the quality of dairy products on the farm and bolstered student confidence and pride in making direct and visible positive impacts (figure 4).

Figure 4. Example of changes in stakeholder practices, from using manual cream separation in 2010 (L) to using an electric separator in 2011 (R).

B. OER Module Development Information generated by the baseline study was used to develop an OER teaching module on milk production and hygiene. Faculty members at MAK and MSU, AgShare researchers, and the MSc students participated in the development and writing of different sections of the module (figure 5). The module was divided into six topics: 1. Concepts of milk safety 2. The dairy industry, governance, policy, and legislation in Uganda 3. Infectious contaminants of milk and milk products 4. Non-infectious contaminants of milk and milk products

http://www.oerafrica.org/AgShare



5. Quality assurance and control of milk and milk products 6. Contemporary “from-farm-to-table” approaches in dairy planning and management

Topics included working examples from the action research results and lists of references for additional information when pertinent. Case study reports were also developed from action research findings. The case studies, consisting of videos, picture catalogs, and MSc theses and other reports, were designed to highlight specific aspects of the dairy value chain for use by educators in conjunction with the OER module.

Figure 5. Sample page depicted from the milk production and hygiene module.

III. USE OF THE MILK PRODUCTION AND HYGIENE OER MODULE A. Use of the OER Module at Makerere University The milk production and hygiene OER module has been incorporated into the curriculum for the MSc degree in Livestock Development, Planning, and Management in the COVAB at Makerere University. The module is part of the graduate course MLD 7201: Food Safety and Nutrition. The teaching approach of the class focuses on student-centered learning, using the OER module, case studies from AgShare, recommended textbooks, and articles from scientific journals. The course also incorporates community field visits to stimulate the development of communication, interpersonal skills, group dynamics, and service learning. In addition to the direct learning goals of MLD 7201, the community field visits also provides information from the stakeholder communities to contribute to the information loop that drives the AgShare model.

B. Use of the OER Module through OER Africa The milk production and hygiene OER module has been made available to interested parties through OER Africa. OER Africa serves as a portal for educators and students to learn about OER, how to benefit and incorporate OER into education programs, and how OER is being used throughout Africa to cover a wide variety of topics. The website serves as an access point for OER content developed by the AgShare






Initiative and other projects (e.g., the ACEMaths program for teaching and learning mathematics), and provides search engines and tools for users to locate other sources of OER. The milk production and hygiene module is currently one of six AgShare OER modules, and more modules are planned as the AgShare Program continues in Uganda.

IV. SUMMARY

Development of the milk production and hygiene OER under the AgShare paradigm, using university-led engagement with the community and student researchers as agents of change, achieved a wide range of positive outputs in the community. It was noted that use of OER materials for teaching at the university and in community training sessions was a very handy technique for relaying the desired messages to the target audience, as long as the presentation of materials is appropriate and appealing to the audience (e.g., videos, pictorials, brochures). The students` direct involvement in communities helped their academic mentors to appreciate the diversity and dynamism of the dairy sector on the ground, which formed a fertile opportunity for the students to become facilitators of change at both the university and in the field. The development of the OER-based curricula was informed by results from the action research studies, the multi-stakeholder information loop, and video documentation of milk hygiene and agricultural marketing and management events along the whole dairy value chain. These curricula were reviewed by all stakeholder groups, who found that the materials were useful in filling knowledge gaps that riddled the dairy value chain. At the end of the project, independent evaluation of the AgShare approach, using OER for both community and academic training, concluded that the multi-stakeholder information loop system improves the efficiency of the dairy value chain. This innovative approach has achieved several successes in improving community livelihood, as well as in transforming universities into community development institutions.

V. REFERENCES

1. Kaneene, J.B., Ssajjakambwe, P., Kisaka, S., Miller, R., and Kabasa, J.D. Creating Open Education Resources for Teaching and Community Development through Action Research: An Overview of the Makerere AgShare Project. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (2013).

2. Kato, M., Nakavuma, J.L., and Nasinyama, G. Microbial Risk Assessment: A Case Study of Brucellosis from Bovine Milk and Milk Products in Kiruhura District-Uganda. A dissertation for the award of Master of Livestock Development, Planning and Management, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda (2010).


The activities of the AgShare Program reported here were supported by funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The authors would also like to thank the following institutions and individuals for their contributions to the project: Makerere University, AFRISA (African Institute for Strategic Animal Resource Services and Development), and the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences; Michigan State University—College of Veterinary Medicine, Christine Geith and Karen Vignare of MSU Global Initiative, and RoseAnn Miller of the Center for Comparative Epidemiology; Neil Butcher of OER Africa; SAIDE (South African Institute for Distance Education); and Ken Harley, University of Pretoria.

VII. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Paul Ssajjakambwe is an assistant lecturer in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda. Stevens Kisaka is an assistant lecturer in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda.



Patrick Vudriko is an assistant lecturer in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda. Christopher Setumba and Gloria Bahizi were the AgShare MSc students at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda. John D. Kabasa is a professor and principal of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources, and Biosecurity, Makerere University, Uganda. John B. Kaneene is a University Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Comparative Epidemiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Michigan State University, USA.

The Potential of a Multimedia Open Educational Resource Module in Enhancing Effective Teaching and Learning in a Postgraduate Agricultural Program: Experience From AgShare Project Model


THE POTENTIAL OF A MULTIMEDIA OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE MODULE IN ENHANCING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN A POSTGRADUATE AGRICULTURAL PROGRAM: EXPERIENCE FROM AGSHARE PROJECT MODEL

Jemal Yousuf Hassen Haramaya University

ABSTRACT Graduate programs in agriculture in developing countries such as in Ethiopia are often designed in cognizance of the need for skilled manpower for agricultural development. In Ethiopia, the contribution of graduates of agricultural graduate programs to the attempt to transform smallholder agriculture has become a matter of urgency in the face of the increasing challenge of food insecurity. However, the performance of graduates of those programs in making concrete contributions to the urgent needs of agricultural development has been patchy at best. There might be no single best solution as to how to make agricultural graduate programs and/or their graduates responsive to the needs of agricultural development. In particular, hopes that effective teaching and learning in agricultural graduate programs would lead their students to attain the relevant knowledge and skills to make concrete contributions to agricultural development are frequently not realized. This article seeks to share the experience of implementing the AgShare project model to develop and use an open education resource (OER) module, and in so doing, furthering our understanding of the possibilities of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning toward its intended purpose [1]. Among the key findings from this experience is that a multimedia OER module developed against clearly defined educational needs, with authentic content designed according to sound educational principles, can lead to direct and immediate improvements in the quality of teaching and learning, which enables learners to acquire knowledge and skills that fit an ultimate purpose in a real-life context.

KEY WORDS Ethiopia, graduate program, effective teaching and learning, agricultural development, open educational resources (OER), AgShare

I. INTRODUCTION

Ethiopia’s economy is heavily agrarian. Agriculture accounts for over 40% of GDP and 90% of the total export revenue, and employs about 85% of the country’s labor force [2]. Despite the importance of agriculture in the Ethiopian economy, its agriculture is virtually entirely small scale, subsistence oriented, crucially dependent on rainfall [3], and characterized by low productivity. The average grain yield for various crops is less than two metric tons per hectare [2]. Thus, the growth of the Ethiopian economy relies on the transformation of smallholder agriculture, which dominates the agricultural sector of the country. Realizing the importance of agriculture in the national economy, the Ethiopian Government has embraced the Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy to promote the economic



development of the country since the early 1990s. Agriculture has been a central pillar of the country’s successive development plans, which included the Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP), which covered the years 2002–2005, and the Plan for Accelerated and Sustainable Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), which ran from 2005–2010. During these periods the government invested heavily in agriculture. On the basis of the experiences gained during the preceding plan periods and the national vision, the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) was prepared for the 2010–2015 period. Like all of the preceding plans, the GTP envisages that the agricultural sector will continue to be the major source of the economic growth of the country [3]. Moreover, recognizing the importance of agriculture, the Ethiopian government has been committing huge resources for the development of the agricultural sector in terms of opening up agricultural training and research institutions. As a result, the agricultural sector showed progressive growth over most of the last two decades. However, the huge potential for agricultural growth remains untapped in the face of persistent challenges of food insecurity [3, 4]. The low performance of agriculture contrasts with the potential for growth from the emerging market opportunities and technological innovation that could transform smallholder agriculture [4]. Such a scenario thus implies the need for knowledge-based transformation of smallholder agriculture that is situated in a complex and dynamic economic, social, and ecological environment. Successful knowledge- based agricultural productivity growth, in turn, heavily relies on enhancing the capacities of agricultural graduate programs [6]. In general, the need for intervention to address the critical failure of agricultural curriculum to meet the urgent need to transform smallholder agriculture in developing countries such as Ethiopia is not debatable. However, there might be no single solution to make agricultural graduate programs and/or their graduates relevant to the urgent need of agricultural development [6]. To this end, it is worth sharing an initiative on the ground. The purpose of this paper is to share experiences and lessons learned from one of the ongoing developments in strengthening the regional master’s programs in agriculture and veterinary sciences for eastern and central Africa—through the AgShare Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Among the programs supported by the project, this paper specifically focuses on experiences with an AgShare-model-based multimedia OER module, “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension,” developed for the regional master’s program in Agricultural Information Communication Management (MSc-AICM) hosted by the Department of Rural Development and Agricultural Extension at Haramaya University in Ethiopia. The paper is organized as follows: The next section presents a brief overview of the need for an alternative approach to teaching and learning and offers the AgShare model as a promising alternative. Section 3 presents the guiding principle of the AgShare model and the processes involved in developing the OER module. Section 4 presents the process involved in developing the module and its impact on effective teaching and learning. The section also highlights other aspects directly associated with effective teaching or otherwise. The final section presents key conclusions drawn from the experience with the OER module.

II. THE NEED FOR ALTERNATIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING AND THE POTENTIAL OF THE AGSHARE-MODEL-BASED OER MODULE

AS A PROMISING ALTERNATIVE

The previous section highlighted that the potential for sustainable development to end poverty and hunger in Ethiopia heavily relies on the transformation of its traditional and subsistence-based agricultural system. The section also indicated the untapped potential for agricultural transformation that relies on knowledge-based interventions. In particular, such interventions are challenged by the limited human capacity in agriculture and allied fields [6]. The limited capacity in this context refers not only to the



number of graduates in the agriculture field but also the knowledge and skill required by the graduates to make meaningful contributions to agricultural development. As a graduate of an agriculture program, one needs to have knowledge and skills that can contribute to the successful transformation of smallholder agriculture. This could be in the form of knowledge and skills required by agriculture graduates employed by organizations working at different levels, committed both directly and indirectly to making a difference in smallholder farmers’ livelihoods. In connection to this, the teaching and learning in graduate agricultural programs is therefore expected to equip graduates with the required knowledge and skills. However, the effectiveness of the current style of teaching and learning in agricultural graduate programs in terms of equipping graduates with required knowledge and skills that enable them to make concrete contributions in agricultural development endeavours left a lot to be desired. To this end, it is imperative to ask the following question: in a country like Ethiopia with ample potential for agricultural development coupled with enormous resources committed to agricultural training and research, why does food insecurity and transformation of smallholder farmer livelihoods remain a challenge? The answer to this question leads to another question: could conventional teaching and learning at the agricultural graduate level enable graduates to have knowledge and skills that would have meaningful impact on agricultural development? Such questions obviously imply the pressing demand for quality teaching and learning in graduate agricultural curricula, raising questions about the effectiveness of conventional teaching and learning. Standard conventional teaching in universities emphasizes teaching of theory with less focus on students’ practical skills needed in the field. Students might be taught from up-to-date reference books, but the opportunity given for students to reflect on the practical application of the classroom theory in practical farming communities’ situations is often limited. This kind of approach to teaching is not powerful enough to make the difference required to transform the lives of smallholder farmers. Transforming smallholder farmers requires intensive knowledge of the complex farming system and thus requires more community-based learning [6]. The emerging paradigm of quality teaching and learning is also in favor of such a move. Linking classroom learning to the root context of the working environment has become the defining feature of the emerging paradigm of quality teaching in the twenty-first century. Graduates are expected to operate in complex, interdisciplinary, dynamic, and uncertain working environments. The mode of learning at university will need to equip students with appropriate skills, knowledge, values, and attributes that will enable them to succeed in such challenging working environments. To this end, there is a strong drive to build and create knowledge together with an understanding of working life and to reformulate the concept of knowledge in learning situations. Tighter connections with working life through different academic projects provide authentic opportunities to learn both generic and professional competencies [5]. Moreover, there is also pressure on universities from farming communities. In this regard the report of UNDP asserted the urgent need for linking African universities to rural farming communities to meet their growing needs [8]. The AgShare-model-based approach innovatively responds to such pressing needs. The module created relevant and effective student learning in the coursework component of the program, enabling students to engage directly with local issues rather than experiencing them through abstract theory. The AgShare- model-based OER module enhanced the context of learning, teacher-student relationships, and structure of curriculum. These are known to be at the center of quality teaching and learning underpinning learning theory, discussed later in the paper.

III. GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND PROCCESES BEHIND THE SUCCESS OF THE AGSHARE MODEL

The founding principles and the process they entail are behind the AgShare-model-based OER module’s achievements. These achievements demonstrate the potential of the model’s approach to enhance quality



teaching and learning. To this end, this section will briefly present the principles of the model, the process involved in developing the module, and the associated achievements. The AgShare model is based on a set of comprehensive principles that guided the achievements of quality teaching and learning through multimedia OER. The guiding principles include the need to consider available resources in developing the OER module; designing OER according to sound educational principles; considering potential scalability of OER while serving the intended program; considering learner engagement in the process of OER development to enhance their learning experience; placing emphasis on the need to build structured relationships between academics, students, content suppliers, and community-wide partners, such as farmers, to facilitate the creation and sharing of OER with positive impact on all parties; and the possibility of repackaging OER for different target audiences besides the academic learners, such as farmers [1]. From the above premise, it is apparent that AgShare-model-based development of a multimedia OER module considers the need to respond to quality teaching and learning from the perspective of all stakeholders associated directly or indirectly with teaching and learning. To this end, it considers quality teaching and learning in light of the immediate purpose of classroom learning as well as the ultimate goal of enhancing the knowledge and skills learners need in a real-life context. In other words, the AgShare model implies that the nurturing of teaching and learning toward its intended purpose can be achieved if all stakeholders (for example, students, teachers, farmers, etc.) equally contribute to the generation and sharing of knowledge. It is an approach that is needed to nurture conventional teaching toward the development of more relevant and quality teaching needed to facilitate agricultural development. In general, the guiding principle of the AgShare model interestingly responds to different aspects of quality needs in the twenty-first century [5].

A. Processes Involved in Developing an Effective OER Module The process followed in developing the OER module “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension” demonstrated the innovative approach of the AgShare model that responded to the needs of key actors concerned, both directly and otherwise, with quality teaching and learning. To this end, this subsection explains how the process enabled achievement of the intended goal of the intervention while taking into consideration the prevailing context of teaching and learning. The prevailing teaching and learning context: Like other postgraduate programs in Haramaya University, the prevailing teaching and learning context in the Department of Rural Development for its master’s programs (MSc in AIMC and MSc in RDAE) and PhD program in RDAE is based on the conventional classroom lecture. The lecture class interactions are usually one-way and tend to be teacher centered. The course contents are primarily about abstract theory and are prepared by the course lecturer based on a course description given in the syllabus. Supporting theory-based class lectures with practical fieldwork usually depends on the motivation and commitment of lecturers. If efforts are made by some to provide printed case studies as references, the clarity of learning outcomes tends to be patchy, and it is questionable whether learners benefit from such print-based case studies. To this end, it is imperative to ask where and when the results from research and experience from community service get utilized to add value to classroom teaching. Or why is teaching separated from the other two pillars of universities— research and community development—when they are all expected to support one another? The processes involved in AgShare-model-based OER module development provide an answer to such questions. Overall goal of the project: The overall goal of the project was to establish a complete set of teaching and learning materials (integrating both printable and multimedia formats) for the course “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension” for the MSc program in Agricultural Information Communication Management (AICM), thereby creating opportunities for additional farmer impact, improved learning outcomes, and use by other MSc faculty in a variety of higher education institutions beyond those that created the materials.



Process followed: In order to achieve the above-stated goal, there were a number of activities involved in the process of developing the course package. The key activities included the following:

• Comprehensive review of available resources from both digital libraries (OER or otherwise) and physical libraries

• Review and documentation of relevant cases from extension activities of Haramaya University and the Department of Rural Development and Agricultural Extension

• Documentation of student activities in other agricultural programs, and use of relevant ones as part of multimedia packages for the course material development. This included student activities from

o “field project” activities of the regular undergraduate students; o examples of “Supervised Extension Project (SEP)” activities of the mid-career

undergraduate students; and o “village stay” camp activities of the regular undergraduate students.

• Visits to farmers’ fields with students to gather relevant evidence and for student engagement in case study production. These visits also served as a chance to gather feedback from farmers on relevant aspects of the module. For example, regarding communication channels, the farmers’ preference for video messages, as opposed to print posters, was discovered.

• Synthesis and production of a final teaching and learning multimedia package involving the integration of a print- and computer-based multimedia package for the course that followed a sound pedagogical standard with the assistance of a technical expert in the field. This process also included gathering feedback from students on the full content of the material.

• Publishing the multimedia module OER on DVD and on the OER Africa website for use in a Moodle Virtual Learning Environment and to be loaded on RUFORUM website after being peer reviewed.

• Distribution of the DVD to key stakeholders that included universities in Ethiopia (all public universities and some private universities), governmental and nongovernmental development organizations.

Achievements: The process enabled the achievement of all the intended goals, though a few of them need further assessment with regard to OER uptake by other higher learning institutions. An initial national advocacy workshop and DVD distribution indicated that the OER was well received; however, this was an on-the-spot reaction, and further assessment is yet to be made. The following section looks at the achievements in more detail, but the following were the key achievements:

1. A comprehensive contextually relevant multimedia module, “Perspective of Agricultural Extension,” with up-to-date, relevant global cases and theoretical content. This has helped shift the context of teaching from being solely theory based to being more practical and local-context based.

2. A well-structured multimedia module with clearly defined learning outcomes guiding independent student learning. This enabled students to benefit by using the multimedia package, which contextualized the nature of extension systems in theory as well as in practice. Moreover, the package was found to motivate students to read in detail, unlike conventional printed books, which are less interactive and demand searching in a physical library.

3. The process impacted content developers in different ways. For example, it broadened their knowledge on the subject in the field. It also influenced the way teachers value local knowledge, available untapped research outputs, and results from the practical field activities of other academic programs, as well as changing their view of their role as teachers in the classroom.

4. Farmers impacted positively in the process of students conducting case studies.



In general, the innovative nature of the process the model guided in developing the course material is evident. For instance, the focus on contextualized local agricultural extension activities undertaken by Haramaya University, and considering lessons from student field practical activities in developing the module are among its exemplary innovations. The extension activities of the university and students’ field-based practical extension activities have been ongoing for years within the university and the department. But systematic documentation and case study production had not previously been attempted. Neither were these local experiences formally used in the contents of any course materials in the academic program, which focus on theory and other countries’ examples instead. To this end, the project made good use of relevant experiences in the development of the “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension” course material, demonstrating the possibilities of nurturing context of learning with available resources and the synergy between the pillars of the university.

IV. IMPACT ON EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

From the premise of the AgShare-model approach described in the previous section, the innovative capacity of the OER module in responding to the provision of quality teaching and learning is apparent. In this regard quality teaching and learning is described by OECD as follows:

Quality teaching is the use of pedagogical techniques to produce learning outcomes for students. It involves several dimensions, including the effective design of curriculum and course content, a variety of learning contexts (including guided independent study, project-based learning, collaborative learning, experimentation, etc.), soliciting and using feedback, and effective assessment of learning outcomes. It also involves well-adapted learning environments and student support services [5].

From the above description, it is apparent that the “context of learning,” “student-teacher relationship,” and “structure of curriculum” are valid parameters with which to assess the AgShare-model-based OER module on the quality of teaching and learning from the perspective of both teachers and students. Using these parameters, the overall project-wide results from external evaluation showed that the AgShare- model-based multimedia OER positively impacted three main factors underlying effective teaching and learning (see Table 1 summarizing the results from students’ and teachers’ responses). The indicators used to measure each dimension were validated by an external evaluator [1].

Dimensions of teaching and learning Indicator for exemplary teaching and learning

1. Context of learning

Content is developed in an authentic context Learners are introduced to a “community of practice”

Theory is linked to practice

2. The teacher-student relationship

The teacher interacts with students. The student’s voice is heard.

Problem solving and debate occur

3. The structure of the curriculum

Course design makes structure and outcomes clear Students have access to supplementary resources and readings

Students and teachers can adjust sequencing of topics Students and teachers can adjust pacing of content Formative as well as summative assessments occur Assessment is aligned with module structure Assessment criteria are clear to students.

Table 1: Result Summary of Impact of Multimedia OER Module on Teaching and Learning. Source: AgShare Planning and Pilot Project Impact Assessment Report [1]



A. Impact of Multimedia OER on Teaching and Learning Context An OER module can be developed, but the most important consideration is whether the OER brings a meaningful contribution to teaching and learning in terms of nurturing classroom teaching for the intended purpose. In this regard, it is possible to consider to what extent the OER module could contribute to quality and relevant teaching and learning as compared to the conventional approach to teaching. Quality teaching and learning is a relative concept, and it may vary in different contexts. For the purpose at hand, the quality of teaching in universities described by OECD [5] can be considered. That is, quality teaching implies equipping students with knowledge and skills required in their working environments, which in turn calls for reformulating the concepts of knowledge in the learning situation. To this end, the multimedia OER module, “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension,” constituted with theory and local case studies, was found to enable students to learn both the standard theoretical knowledge and practical applications. With the multimedia OER module, the context of teaching and learning moved from the traditional, solely abstract-theory-based learning to more practical, real-life-based learning. The generic theories are interpreted by examining authentic content from a local context. Students are exposed to the community of common practice through video case studies embedded in the module. It is worth noting that the principles underlying the AgShare model collectively contributed to the enhancement of classroom teaching and student learning. For example, the process of developing the multimedia OER module “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension” involved a number of activities guided by the model. It included the content writers’ review of available digital and physical resources; student engagement in producing case studies; the incorporation of student and farmer feedback to improve the content of the module, etc. This process provided the group of students who were attending the course during the process of developing the module materials with the opportunity to test classroom theory in the field. The subsequent cohort that used the complete set of module materials also had similar experiences. The embedded video derived from local cases studies that were carried out by their fellow students enabled them to learn from authentic content and inspired them to explore independent learning opportunities in the practical setting of farming communities.

B. Impact on Teacher-Student Relationship The dynamic and complex social and economic environment of the twenty-first century calls for a change in the role of teacher as a transmitter of knowledge to the students. Teachers should be required to create a learning platform for students. For instance, the challenges facing agricultural development in emerging economies demands that the new generation of agriculture and rural development graduates be independent thinkers. This, in turn, demands a shift from traditional teacher-centered approaches to student-centered approaches. Learning is a lifelong process. Unconventional curriculum and teaching methodology are needed to enable the graduates “learn how to learn.” It is only through enhancement of learners’ learning capacity that academic programs can produce dynamic graduates who have relevant and required competence for responding effectively and efficiently to the challenges of the ever- increasing, multidimensional, and complex issues in agriculture and rural development [7]. The AgShare-model-based multimedia OER module demonstrated its innovativeness in responding to the above-indicated demand for change in the style of learning in higher learning institutions. The module has nurtured the teacher-student relationship. It created the opportunity for teacher-student interaction, and created a platform for debate and problem solving. Unlike the conventional, teacher-centered approach, whereby teachers are the source of knowledge, students also have the opportunity to contribute to knowledge generation.



Independent problem-solving skills are among the abilities required from graduates of agriculture in dealing with smallholder farmers’ problems in a real-life context. To this end, the OER module-based approach provides opportunities to come up with solutions such as case studies based on generic theory and local case studies. The following result from a report on the AgShare Project’s impact also demonstrated such achievement:

Students have DVDs with real-life situations relevant to theory. They read first, then discuss in class. “Students don’t arrive knowing nothing.” Class time is about exchanging insights, clarifying issues, debating issues, forming opinions.

Case studies lead to questions about issues. Because the teacher or textbook is no longer the authority, students learn by coming to their own conclusions.

“Conventional teaching can be dry” because it’s so abstract. We must teach concepts like the institutional approach, managerial approach, etc. With OER “theory comes to life, we see it in everyday life” [1].

The potential of the module to create opportunities for learning from peers is apparent. Peer learning is important in the diverse profile of graduate students, which includes individuals such as adult learners with concrete experience and years-long mind-sets.

C. Impact of Multimedia OER Module on the Structure of the Curriculum The impact on the structure of the curriculum is another impressive effect of the OER module, “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension.” This includes well-structured content with clear learning outcomes and systematically designed assessment criteria motivating students’ engagement in the process of learning while also providing up-to-date reference material online and/or embedded in a DVD, available with just a click. The overall structure of the module was found to be impressive in making teaching and learning relevant and effective. The process of its development brought understanding to lecturers that quality of classroom delivery goes beyond using up-to-date reference materials, which are often in the Western context. Quality and relevance is best interpreted as “fitness for purpose”—adapting the knowledge to local context [6]. Here it may also imply that the mere development of OER is not a panacea to solve the problem; how the OER is structured in putting available knowledge into context is also important. To this end, for example, up-to-date theoretical references and/or empirical findings in other contexts are placed in the module with proper guidance for the student to reflect on how those references or findings can be used or what they imply in a local context. The AgShare-model-based project-wide impact assessment also confirmed that structuring a module in an OER can take students to “the highest level of conceptual thinking” [1]. In general, the process of the module development and the final design enabled/enables learners’ independent learning. In the process of its development, students were linked to rural farming communities to come up with relevant case studies as part of a learning exercise. The full content is also designed in a similar manner, guiding students to conduct similar learning exercises. This is the kind of approach to learning expected to enable learners to obtain the knowledge and skills required to make concrete contributions in real work conditions. It was also observed that the local case studies provided teachers with inspiration to get out of their “ivory tower.” The knowledge of farming communities’ experience enables them to assess the relevance and effectiveness of their teaching, and to identify other opportunities for learning from real-life situations.



D. AgShare-Model-Based OER Module Draws Attention to the Synergy Between the Pillars of University

Higher learning institutions such as Haramaya University are established along three pillars—teaching, research, and extension (community service/development). In this regard, Haramaya University has engaged in these activities ever since its establishment. For example, the first public agricultural extension service in the history of Ethiopia was mandated to Haramaya until the shift of this mandate to the Ministry of Agriculture. Besides countless academic researches, the university is also responsible for conducting commodity research for the eastern regions of the country in collaboration with the national agricultural research institutes. As a result, it has released a number of research-improved technologies, such as crop varieties, animal breeds, post-harvest technology, small-scale poultry-production technology, etc. Notwithstanding the pioneering experience of Haramaya University in research and extension, the university has overlooked its contribution of research results and experience from community service in enhancing learning. Classroom teaching is highly dependent on books written for the more developed Western context. To this end, the experience with the OER module based on the AgShare model has created a direct link between teaching, research, and extension/community service. For example, the module “Perspectives of Agricultural Extension” demonstrated the link between the three pillars of the university through video case studies that were developed. These video-clip components in the OER module serve to illustrate the farmer-research-extension linkage. This approach to curriculum materials development has brought to classroom teaching the innovations from scientific research, farmer reactions to the innovation, and the role of extension advisory service in the innovation process. The OER module, during a national advocacy workshop’s showcase, was praised by participants and served to bring attention to the importance of available resources on the shelf, which could add value to teaching and learning.

E. Multimedia OER Module Ensured Quality of Teaching and Learning Maintained

Although the quality of the module developed through the AgShare model is subject to further evaluation [1], experience with the approach demonstrated its potential to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in different respects. In this regard, the potential contribution of the model to quality mainly revolves around the process involved in developing the module, as discussed in the previous section. The process involved was comprehensive and included the review of available theoretical concepts from both digital and physical libraries, local case studies from student fieldwork, and student and farmer feedback. These processes, if systematically followed, enable movement away from conventional teacher-centered and theory-based learning to more relevant student-centered and community-based learning. In other words, in the AgShare model the basic theories are not compromised, but rather value is added as theoretical concepts are interpreted together with local case studies. The other important aspect of using the multimedia OER module is that it ensures the sustainability of delivering quality teaching and learning over time. In universities, lectures for courses are usually given based on the course description in terms of the time or credit hours set in a curriculum. The quality of course delivery is mainly assessed by students based on certain criteria, such as provision of a course outline and its coverage, provision of reference material, instructors’ level of preparation for the lecture class, his or her knowledge of the subject matter, etc. In connection to this, the opportunity to improve student learning using practical cases relies on an individual teacher’s self-motivation and commitment. Moreover, even if he or she is motivated and committed to that end, the curriculum might not be well structured. Multimedia-embedded and well-structured OER is obviously a solution to such challenges. Once in place, a good quality OER can provide well-organized lecture notes supported by both theory and practical cases for lecturers as well as learners.



It is also possible to see the contribution of the OER module as one way of setting minimum standards to ensure quality in terms of the content of the course and its relevance in enabling learners to achieve the required knowledge and skills. It also has the ability to facilitate continuity of teaching and learning in the face of high staff turnover, a common problem of most universities in Ethiopia. Moreover, in the dynamic world of the twenty-first century, once such an OER module is in place, it will be easier to update to keep in line with the changing knowledge frontier. It is obvious that courses delivered without such OER have fewer opportunities to change with the changing knowledge frontier. This lack of opportunity for change is because the course content is in the hands of lecturers, and it is invisible to the associated community of common practice, whose scrutiny could make it better.

F. OER Placed Farming Community at the Center of Learning Process Community-based learning is at the center of developing AgShare-model-based OERs. The focus given to farming communities in the AgShare model was found to be responsive to the growing challenges around the need to enhance learning. For example, at the beginning of this paper, the growing need for experiential and/or community-based learning and the need for linking African universities to rural communities are indicated. In connection to this, the OER developed through the AgShare model has been innovative in linking classroom teaching with farming communities through field-based practical cases. Students are also linked to farming communities as part of their learning engagement. The evaluation of the AgShare project also confirmed the impact of the AgShare model on farming communities, as well as their impact on classroom teaching.

V. CONCLUSIONS

It can be concluded that it is possible to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in agricultural curricula, and thus to enhance the capacity of graduates to have meaningful impact on agricultural development. This can be achieved through the development and use of relevant multimedia OER modules if a systematic approach that encompasses the following key principles among others is considered in its development:

1. Designing systematic processes that ensure relevance of learning context, mode of delivery, and structure of the module. Well-contextualized multimedia OER modules that are developed along clear pedagogical principles can lead to direct and immediate improvement in the quality of teaching and learning.

2. Building structured relationships between academics, students, content suppliers, and community- wide partners, such as farmers, in facilitating the creation and sharing of OER can yield a positive impact on all parties involved. This is one of the most powerful principles of the AgShare model. For example, engaging students in the production of educational materials contributed to the enhancement of their own learning experiences, which will enable them to deal with problems in real life; farmers’ farming practices can be positively impacted through their interaction with students during their field engagements and/or from their participation in the creation of OER module components, such as video cases that are used in addressing their needs.

VI. REFERENCES

1. AgShare Plan and Pilot Project. Impact Study Report (2011). http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/i d/39276/Default.aspx

2. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Growth and Transformation Plan: 2010/11–2014/15, Annual Progress Report for the 2010/11 Fiscal Year, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Addis Ababa, 2012.

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/i

http://www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer/AgricultureResources/ResultsPage/tabid/1784/mctl/Details/i



3. Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FDRE-MoARD). Ethiopia’s Agriculture Sector Policy and Investment Framework (PIF) 2010– 2020. Draft Final Report, September 2010.

4. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). In-Depth Assessment of the Public Agricultural Extension System of Ethiopia and Recommendation for Improvement. IFPRI Discussion Paper 01040. IFPRI, Eastern and Sothern Africa Regional Office, 2010.

5. OECD. Fostering Quality Teaching in Higher Education: Policies and Practices. An IMHE Guide for Higher Education Institutions, September 2012.

6. Tefera, T.L., Tegegne, A. and Hoekstra, D. Capacity for Knowledge-Based Smallholder Agriculture in Ethiopia. Linking Graduate Programs to Market-Oriented Agricultural Development: Challenges, Opportunities and IPMS Experience. ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute), Nairobi, Kenya, 2011.

7. Tefera, T.L. and Hassan, J.Y. The Mid-Career BSc Program at Haramaya University: An Overview of the Program and Its Success, and Emerging Challenges. Proceedings of a Regional Network for “Experience Sharing Workshop on the Mid-Career Programs in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region.” Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania 26–27 September, 2006.

8. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Linking Universities and Rural Areas: Enhancing Capacity For Development. Global Event Working Paper. UNDP: New York, NY, 2010.

VII. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jemal Yousuf Hassen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Rural Development and Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Haramaya University, Ethiopia. In his position he teaches and supervises graduate students, conducts research, frequently offers on-the-job training for staff of governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the areas of food security and rural development. Hassen’s wishes are to improve agricultural extension advisory service along the value chain through cutting-edge technologies, food security issues of smallholder farmers, and to enhance teaching and learning in higher institutions.



Building Academic Staff Capacity to Support Online Learning in Developing Countries


BUILDING ACADEMIC STAFF CAPACITY TO SUPPORT ONLINE LEARNING IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Brenda Mallinson South African Institute for Distance Education, Rhodes University

Greig Krull South African Institute for Distance Education

ABSTRACT Higher education institutions (HEIs) in Africa face the challenge of responding to the expanding demand for tertiary education while maintaining or enhancing the quality of their course offerings. This demand has led to some HEIs introducing the use of interactive web technologies to support their distance teaching and learning practices. However, academic staff at these institutions may struggle to provide sufficient support to online learners in part due to inadequate staff capacity in terms of familiarity with and use of online communication tools and virtual learning environments. This paper reports the design and development of an openly licensed capacity-building intervention and the piloting thereof with academic staff at three southern Africa educational institutions. The aim of the capacity-building intervention is to initiate skill development and introduce foundational concepts in support of engaging online learners. The design and development of the course material is discussed, and the experiences of the pilot delivery are examined.

KEYWORDS Online Learners, Learner Support, Capacity-building, African Higher Education, Open Course

I. INTRODUCTION

The potential of using information and communication technologies (ICT) to increase access to higher education is evidenced by the way it has grown and expanded over the past few years [1]. The eLearning Africa 2012 Report [2] notes that in a survey of 447 respondents, a large majority of people (74%) make use of ICT to aid teaching and learning. The report also notes that the “landscape has changed substantially over the last five years” and identifies increased access to the Internet at increased speeds and reduced costs as a major contributor to this change. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) aim to integrate educational ICTs in support of their teaching and learning in order to enhance the quality of the education provided. One of the benefits of introducing online teaching and learning is that it may help to expand curricula offerings more cost effectively and may help students gain important technological skills [3]. In deploying virtual learning environments (VLEs) to support the teaching and learning process by housing online courses, HEIs endeavor to make courses more student centered, and they enhance communication among students as well as between students and lecturers [4, 5]. HEIs need to consider the availability of administrative and ICT support, the choice of instructional methods, the assessment strategy, and maintenance of online resources [3]. Thoughtful planning and significant financial commitment are often required to ensure high- quality learning support [1]. However, lecturers may be unprepared to implement technologically



supported learning activities due to a lack of ICT skills [6] and an insufficient understanding of the purposes and functionality of particular components available both within and outside VLEs. This paper discusses the support that online learners require in order to engage successfully with their studies. It then focuses on the knowledge and skills lecturers need to be able to effectively support online learning. Various approaches to developing capacity for lecturers are examined . The experiences of designing and developing a set of course materials to build this capacity are described. The paper then reports the experiences of piloting this capacity-building intervention at three southern African HEIs.

II. LEARNER SUPPORT

Learner support is essential for successful online learning in that it assists in promoting persistence and engagement and in avoiding dropout [1]. The support that online learners require goes beyond academic support and includes administrative support as well as technological support. This support should be flexible, continuously available, easily accessible, and genuinely useful for students [1]. It is important to understand the needs of the prospective learner groups so that institutions are able to determine the nature of support needed. Therefore, in addition to an awareness of associated costs for students, institutions should determine prospective learners’ educational goals, readiness for online learning, and access to and familiarity with the technology required [1]. To be successful, online learners require orientation to a variety of common end-user software, the course (virtual) environment, basic use of the Internet, and how and where to get support and information on technological requirements [3]. Supporting online learners requires lecturers to maximise the affordances of a VLE by designing and implementing highly engaging, interactive, collaborative, and multidimensional [3] courses. Ongoing learner interaction can be achieved using communication tools such as e-mail, structured discussion forums, and chat rooms. The lecturers should aim to develop an online teaching- learning community that will provide a safe learning environment for the group of learners. The introduction and deployment of VLEs or learning management systems has grown rapidly in higher education institutions worldwide [4]. The aim of a VLE is to create a learning environment in which all aspects of teaching and learning are handled in a reliable and standard user interface throughout the institution [6] on a course-by-course basis while preserving the integrity of the course environment.

III. STAFF CHALLENGES TO SUPPORTING ONLINE LEARNING

Once it has been established what types of support online learners need, HEIs need to be able to offer it to students. A common challenge that institutions face is how to build the staff capacity to integrate technology and to manage and facilitate their online offerings [5]. Most lecturers do not comfortably engage with educational technology when exposed to it for the first time [7] due to various environmental and culture differences between the online and traditional classroom. Some of these characteristics of online learning are contrasted with traditional classrooms in table 1 [adapted from 8 and 9].



Characteristics Online Learning Traditional Classroom Collaboration • Teamwork and networking are

valued, promoted by easy online interaction

• Virtual communities

• Classroom is a self-contained unit, basis of individualism and competition

• Physical communities Connectivity and access

• Interaction with peers and experts

• Fast and unobtrusive contact through e-mail and conferencing

• Not place and time dependent

• Explicit and implicit barriers between peers and experts

• Bounded geographically into one- size-fits-all program

Student- centeredness

• Instructors define goals, then largely facilitate or manage

• Students largely determine direction through participation

• More structure provided by instructor

• Less responsibility for learners

Resources • Via the web—huge resource • Interactive media-rich offerings

• Via books, journals—limited by what is at hand locally

• Mostly static media available

Table 1. Some contrasting characteristics exist between online and traditional classrooms. The changes needed to convert from a traditional classroom learning to an online learning environment as indicated in Table 1 lead to several challenges that may inhibit staff from engaging in online instruction. The challenges identified in Yang and Cornelius’ study on online education [3] are as follows:

• Changing the role of the lecturer: online education is seen as student-centered education, while traditional education is regarded as tending towards instructor-centered, the former requiring the instructor to become more of a facilitator than lecturer.

• Changing the role of the learners: they transition from traditional, passive classroom learners into more active, online inquirers.

• Integrating new technologies: staff need to learn how to make the most appropriate use of technologies for teaching and learning purposes.

• Improving interaction and communication: staff need to address the challenges of not having traditional, face-to-face contact as well as how to build interpersonal relations with learners.

At a very early stage in the development of ICTs to support teaching and learning in higher education institutions, Plomp recognized and identified the multiple roles that lecturers are now required to perform in the HEI sector: Lecturers will become facilitators and designers of students’ learning environments, and they may take on a variety of roles such as resource person, coordinator, and often co-learner and co- problem solver. This demands a special approach to staff development, which goes beyond the training of basic ICT skills [10]. In order to address the challenges identified above, lecturers need to be aware of what competencies are required to facilitate online learning. These competencies include being a content facilitator, competent ICT user, and learning designer amongst others [5]. Anderson [11] asserts that an excellent online teacher is primarily an excellent teacher. But beyond good teaching skills, facilitators require sufficient ICT skills to be able to address technical challenges that may arise. Online facilitators need to understand their roles and responsibilities and be fully



prepared in order to teach online courses. In some instances, they also need to design and deliver strategies, techniques, and methods for teaching online courses. The online facilitator needs to understand not only the ICT platform used to support online teaching, but also the design skills necessary to avoid “dumping” content into the online environment [5]. In order to foster cooperation, staff need to promote learner-to-learner interaction, engage learners in regular activities, and cultivate a sense of self-directedness in students [3].

IV. BUILDING STAFF CAPACITY

Once the required competencies have been established, the institution needs to determine an approach to administer professional development to academic staff in order to cultivate or enhance these competencies. Lecturers need to become familiar with the online learning environment, receive training on how to use the required technology, and be able to get support from experienced instructors when needed [3]. Some institutional approaches to the development of staff are categorized as follows [5]:

• Innovation: adopt an emphasis on innovation, rather than the technology, which supports opportunities for staff to attempt new teaching and learning methods that encourage staff to support each other and share knowledge and skills.

• Online facilitation of competencies: the competencies required for online facilitation are used to design the basis for a course about online teaching and learning. These competency areas include administration, facilitation, technical, and evaluation skills.

• Accredited courses: formal, accredited courses used by academic staff to obtain certificates or degrees in online teaching.

• Professional staff development: professional development opportunities delivered via online methods.

• Localized peer support: staff provide peer support to others engaged in adopting new technologies in teaching and learning; for example, through a mentoring program.

In order to integrate learning technologies across the institution successfully, staff development strategies need to focus on achieving a critical mass of staff who are competent online course designers, developers, and facilitators. Thus institutions may use a combination of approaches listed above to build staff capacity. It is important to design a capacity-building program that is aligned to the needs and/or readiness of academic staff. A staged approach can be used to design a staff development program that uses incremental steps to match readiness levels of the mainstream staff and expose them to a less risky journey to moving online. This approach aligns to the view that staff development needs to be delivered “just in time” and grounded in specific, localized contexts [5]. The provision of clear definitions of the entry-level technical and pedagogical skills and the content appropriate for each step towards competency should be determined. Another relevant approach focuses on peer support and mentoring. As staff practice the newly learned skills, they may seek expert or experienced technical and/or pedagogical advice. The establishment of a community focused around educational technology provides opportunities for staff to share experiences, ideas, and reflections [3, 7]. This community could be informal and made up of purely academic staff, or the institution could establish a centralized unit to provide technical and pedagogical support [12]. Authentic contexts to situate learning activities for academic staff should be exploited. If projects and project teams within schools or departments are the context for staff development, they provide authentic purpose for more effective results [5]. It is recommended that staff development activities combine online and face-to-face learning opportunities so that staff experience learning online from the learner's perspective [3, 5].



V. THE COURSE DESIGN

As an educational non-governmental organization with a focus on supporting all elements of distance education and working in southern Africa for over 20 years, the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) has considerable experience in distance education course design and learner support. In 1998, Saide published a guide for distance education tutors, called “Supporting Distance Learners,” that focused on a traditional primarily paper-based distance education context [13]. Over the years, the emerging use of educational technologies in distance education and the resulting pedagogical innovation has progressively made it possible to shift from paper-based distance education towards online distance education [14]. An idea was raised to update “Supporting Distance Learners” as an online course to take into account learning theories and digital tools in an online environment. This update is reflected in changing the guide’s name to “Supporting Online Learners” (SOL). The resource was redesigned with the principles of open learning in mind, where the goal is to remove the barriers to learning while being scalable and flexible so that no one is denied access [15]. Open learning promotes lifelong learning opportunities and learner-centered learning processes. As part of the open movement, open educational resources (OER) provide a way to share and use educational resources without the need to pay royalties or license fees [14]. From the outset, it was decided to make this resource available as an OER for other educators to access, share, and adapt. With the help of an external consultant from Beyond Distance Research Alliance (BDRA) at the University of Leicester, the design team set about updating the content and form of the guide into an online course with materials initially available as web pages on Saide’s OER Africa website [13]. It was recognized that the online resources also needed to be situated within some kind of virtual environment in order to provide a stable environment for the educators to practice using some of the digital tools in the same virtual space as the learning content. During the development of the course materials, this environment was first developed in the Ning social networking application [13] and then later in the Moodle VLE. This VLE deployment aligns with the principle of sharing OERs by providing access to resources in a variety of formats. The resource is available as set of web pages with an OER licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (which means that it can be used and adapted as long as it is attributed) [16]. Additionally, the resource is also available as an unmediated set of online course materials or as a mediated course, both of which could be delivered within a VLE. The learning design of the course aimed to integrate relevant theory and the careful design of learning materials and learner activities, building an appropriate learning pathway that takes learners through the desired experiences. The course aims to achieve the following learning outcomes for educators:

• Prepare lecturers for teaching and learning with technology • Understand the role of a facilitator in supporting learners involved in open learning,

distance education, or online learning • Support learners in the individual and collaborative construction of knowledge • Support learners in moving successfully through the five stages [17] that online learners

typically go through • Support learners effectively through the use of asynchronous and synchronous

communication tools • Use assessments and assignments effectively as learning tools

During the design of the course, the opportunity was recognized for the Saide design team not

http://www.ning.com/

https://moodle.org/



only to engage with and review the materials independently, but also to seize the opportunity to facilitate a staff professional development exercise based on SOL. Staff completed a workshop session on the key learning tasks or activities by working through the course withi n a two-week period. The facilitator was remotely located in the UK, which provided a partially authentic distributed environment even though all of the participants were co-located. This activity provided what may be viewed as a pre-pilot exercise in order to complete the course development within an authentic environment, where the designers of the activities were themselves developing new skills with respect to the following [13]:

• Navigating the online learning environment • Understanding and managing the learning process in an online environment

The key elements learned from this endeavor [13] were expressed as the following: • Significant insight was gained in terms of understanding the challenges with regard to

online facilitation/tutoring, particularly in a developing country context. • The time and effort needed to familiarize learners and tutors with the tools and processes

in online learning should not be underestimated. • The intensity of engagement required in an online course is time-consuming, and this

must be taken into account when planning an online course implementation. • The participant group size needs to be taken into account in terms of effectively

managing online interactions. • Intensive capacity development is required for tutors or facilitators in order to undertake

their assigned tasks well. These elements were then incorporated into the revised course design. The SOL course is divided into six units. Table 2 lists the six units, provides a brief description and purpose for the unit, and lists the primary learning activities that take place within each unit.

Unit Description and Purpose Learning Activities Unit 1: The Lifelong Learner

The aim is to familiarize participants with the concept of e-learning readiness and some of the challenges online learners face when they learn at a distance and use technologies that may be new to them. This unit also explores the changed roles of lecturers, learners, and facilitators that support online learners.

• Explore the concept of online learning readiness.

• Review the changing roles of lecturers and students.

• Complete a survey on online learning readiness needs for lecturers.

• Recognise the e-readiness needs of learners. Review the competencies required for online facilitators.

Unit 2: Open and Online Learning

Participants are exposed to concepts commonly associated with online learning: namely, the relationship between open learning, distance learning, and e-learning; various modes of e-learning programme delivery; and the pervasiveness of Web 2.0 technologies [18] that allow online users to interact and collaborate with each other as content creators.

• Review the principles of open learning.

• Explore different types of learning programs: web supplemented, web dependent, and fully online

• Explore the use of Web 2.0 technologies for learning.



Unit Description and Purpose Learning Activities Unit 3: Support for Online Learners

Participants are familiarized with pedagogical theories underpinning online learning. The Wisdom Community (WisCom) learning design model [19] informs the design of each of the learning activities, so that participants are exposed to application of the model throughout the course and they themselves progress through this five-stage learning pathway. The course also incorporates elements of Salmon’s five stages of online learning [17].

• Reflect on the different approaches to learning online.

• Create online learning activities using the Wiscom model.

• Explore how to support learners to move through the five stages of the Salmon model.

Unit 4: Asynchronous Communication

Available tools for asynchronous communication are explored, such as e-mail, discussion forums, blogs, wikis, and mobile phone text messages. Educators are encouraged to consider the implications of using these tools in their teaching and learning and have opportunities throughout the course to implement them in activities.

• Explore the use of asynchronous tools such as discussion forums, blogs, and wikis.

• Create guidelines for encouraging participation and depth in asynchronous communication.

Unit 5: Synchronous Communication

Participants explore the ways in which synchronous online communication can be managed to provide maximum support for learners. An opportunity is provided for live virtual classroom web conferencing through tools such as Blackboard Collaborate.

• Explore the use of synchronous tools such as instant messaging, online tutorials, and virtual worlds.

• Experience the use of web conferencing.

• Create guidelines for synchronous facilitation.

Unit 6: Assessments and Assignments

This unit examines the importance of assessment in fostering learning. The unit addresses the kind of assessments that challenge learners to go beyond mere regurgitation of facts and examines ways of constructing assignments as course scaffolding.

• Recognise the role of assignments in supporting learning; build collaboration into assignments.

• Create guidelines for providing constructive feedback.

• Discover the use of e- portfolios.

• Explore the use of plagiarism tools.

Table 2. The SOL course units and associated learning activities summarized.

VI. THE PILOT COURSE DELIVERY

In the experiences of piloting the Supporting Online Learners Course, the authors were approached by the Southern African Development Community’s Centre for Distance Education to provide professional development workshops for early adopters of online learning at several of their HEIs already involved in traditional distance education, namely: the Namibian College of Open Learning, the Botswana College of Distance and Open Learning, and the University of Swaziland.

http://www.blackboard.com/platforms/collaborate/overview.aspx

http://www.sadc.int/

http://www.namcol.edu.na/



http://www.bocodol.ac.bw/

http://www.uniswa.sz/





These professional development exercises formed an opportunity to test and refine the SOL course. The aim of the workshops was to familiarize academics with some of the theory and practice of online learning and enable them to decide on their next online learning implementation steps, both personally and institutionally. Both pilot workshops were delivered via the Moodle VLE, which is customizable and free open source software (under the GNU Public License) [6]. Live meetings were facilitated via the use of the Blackboard Collaborate. The first SOL capacity-building pilot was run in November 2010 for 10 participants using three face-to-face facilitators. The web-conferencing activity was undertaken by dividing the participants into three groups situated in different rooms to simulate distributed locations. No further online facilitation was provided, although the participants had continued online access to the course environment. A review of the course was undertaken by the authors who then refined the course based on experiences in the pilot. The SOL course was run again in November 2011 for 27 different participants. In order to deploy the practice of “the medium is the message,” this workshop was presented using a blended approach. The first two days of the workshop offered the initial confidence-building face-to-face support for participants, while the following three days were offered online, emphasizing and embedding the skills required for online teaching and learning. During the first online day, the main facilitator was at a remote location, but the participants were still together in a local computer laboratory supported by a local facilitator. The subsequent remaining two online days were conceptual, in that the participants were encouraged to engage with the course from distributed locations over a period of time longer than the two days. This change was to provide some experience of the “anytime, anywhere” aspect afforded when learning online. Prior to the start of each course, participants completed an online learning readiness survey. Once the courses were complete, both facilitators and participants provided anonymous course feedback via an online evaluation. The following sections highlight the experiences of the pilots.

A. Aspects that Went Well Data from the online evaluation indicated that participants found the workshops to be extremely valuable, equipping individuals with the basics of how to engage both with online learning themselves and with other online learners. The course also illustrated to participants how they can help their students to own their knowledge generation. The highly interactive nature of the workshops enabled sharing of ideas among participants, leading to new collaborations within the institutions. The workshop course enabled participants to think about the steps needed to begin online facilitation, both personally and institutionally. Participants enjoyed the practical application activities and engaging with each other and the facilitators through discussion forums, chats, and reflective blogs. The blended approach in the second workshop allowed participants to experience online learning from a student perspective as well as learn about web conferencing from a genuinely remote location.

B. Aspects that Required Improvement Both facilitators and students suggested a few aspects for improvement. Participants felt they needed more time to engage fully with all aspects of this course and suggested an extension to the online-facilitated portion of the blended workshop. Connection and audio setup issues led to some frustration experienced by participants during the live web conferencing sessions. In order to address these concerns in future workshops, a mandatory “drop-in session” will be incorporated one day before the workshop to familiarize the participants with the technology. Additional technical support for using this tool needs to be considered in future workshop s. The facilitators suggested that, during future workshops, time could be allocated to identify participants as future workshop facilitators, as well as those who could provide mentoring support to their colleagues.

https://moodle.org/

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/



http://www.blackboard.com/platforms/collaborate/overview.aspx



C. Institutional Impact During the final session of each workshop, participants determined a set of recommendations for each institution. In summary, the main recommendation for each institution was to create an online teaching and learning road map, such as that developed by the National Centre for Technology in Education [20]. In order to develop the road map, the institution would need to assess e-readiness for staff as well as learners. Further recommendations included establishing affected stakeholder commitment to the road map and starting with pilot implementations before full rollout. Institutions also planned to seek support, where needed, from the other South African Development Community institutions involved in similar initiatives and to engage in benchmarking of online learning practices with other HEIs in the region.

VII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

This paper reported the experiences of designing a capacity-building intervention to enable academic staff to successfully support online learning. It also reported on the successful piloting of the capacity-building course at three southern African HEIs. The course is now available as an OER in three formats for others to use and adapt. The authors will continue to revise and update the “Supporting Online Learners” OER as per the findings of the workshops as well as continue to facilitate this course for other HEIs in southern Africa. Any feedback from anyone using, adapting, or reviewing the OER would be welcomed by the authors. The aim of future research is to use professional development to build capacity in online course design and online facilitation, creating a suite of OERs. This development could consist of a series of interventions structured around course and materials design principles; online course design using Moodle; design and development of digital objects/multimedia; the use, adaptation, and development of OERs; online assessment and evaluation; supporting online learning; quality assurance for online courses; and policy development for online learning.

VIII. REFERENCES

1. Moisey, S., and Hughes, J. Supporting the Online Learner. In: Anderson, T. (Ed.), The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, 2nd ed., AU Press: Athabasca, Alberta, 419–432, 2008.

2. Isaacs, S., and Hollow, D. (Eds.) The eLearning Africa 2012 Report. http://www.elearning-africa.com/media_library_publications.php.

3. Yang, Y., and Cornelious, L.F. Preparing instructors for quality online instruction. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration (OJDLA) 8(1) (2005). http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/yang81.htm.

4. Snowball, J., and Mostert, M. Introducing a Learning Management System in a Large First Year Class: Impact on Lecturers and Students. SA Journal of Higher Education (SAJHE) 24(5): 818–831 (2010).

5. Wilson, G., and Stacey, E. Online Interaction Impacts on Learning: Teaching the Teachers to Teach Online. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET) 20(1): 33–48 (2004).

6. Seke Mboungou Mouyabi, J. Higher Education in the Wake of New ICT: Reaping Benefits or Creating More Problems Through e-Learning. SA Journal of Higher Education (SAJHE) 25(6): 1178–1189 (2011).

7. Lautenbach, G. Expansive Learning Cycles: Lecturers Using Educational Technologies for Teaching and Learning. SA Journal of Higher Education (SAJHE) 24(5): 699–715 (2010).

8. Harasim, L., Hiltz, S.R., Teles, L., and Turoff, M. Learning Networks: A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998.

https://moodle.org/

http://www.elearning-africa.com/media_library_publications.php

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/yang81.htm



9. Kearsley, G. Online Education: Learning and Teaching in Cyberspace, Wadsworth: Thomson Learning Inc., 2000.

10. Plomp, T. Higher Education for the 21st Century and the Potential of ICT. In: Maltha, H.W., Gerrissen, J.F., and Veen, W. (Eds.), The Means and the Ends: ICT and Third World Education, Amsterdam: Nuffic, 15–27, 1999.

11. Anderson, T. Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. (Ed.), The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, 2nd ed., AU Press: Athabasca, Alberta, 343–365, 2008.

12. Mtebe, J.S., Dachi, H., and Raphael, H. Integrating ICT into Teaching and Learning at the University of Dar Es Salaam. Distance Education 32(2): 289–294 (August 2011).

13. Welch, T., Drew, S., and Randell, C. Promoting Learning in an Online Environment. Saide, 2010. http://www.saide.org.za/resources/newsletters/Vol_16_no.4_2010/Content/SDL%20case% 20study%2030%20Aug10.doc.

14. Ngugi, C. OERs in Africa’s Higher Education Institutions. Distance Education 32(2): 277– 288 (August 2011).

15. Bates, A.W. Technology, E-Learning And Distance Education, London: Routledge, 2005. 16. Saide/OER Africa. Supporting Distance Learners Course. 2011.

http://www.oerafrica.org/supportinglearners/SAIDE/tabid/996/Default.aspx. 17. Salmon, G. E-moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning Online, 2nd ed., London:

Routledge, 2004. 18. Crook, C. Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 and 4. Becta Research

Report, Coventry: Becta, 2008. 19. Gunawardena, C., Ortegano-Layne, L., Carabajal, K., Frechette, C., Lindemann, K.,

and Jennings, B. New Model, New Strategies: Instructional Design for Building Online Wisdom Communities. Distance Education 27(2): 217–232 (August 2006).

20. Dublin City University National Centre for Technology in Education. The e-Learning Roadmap. http://www.ncte.ie/elearningplan/roadmap/.


Brenda Mallinson is the program specialist, Learning Technologies, at Saide and is currently involved in a number of educational technology projects at higher education institutions in Africa, including the PHEA Educational Technology Initiative. She is also a research associate, Information Systems, at Rhodes University, having lectured there from 1999 to 2007. She also ran the Computer Based Education (CBE) Unit from 1994 to 1998, prior to lecturing in the Computer Science Department. At Rhodes, Brenda established a research group in Advanced Learning Technologies, as well as a post-graduate module in Advanced Learning Technologies for Information Systems and Computer Science honors students. Greig Krull is an educational technology specialist at Saide. He has a Master of Commerce degree (specializing in e-learning) from the Information Systems Department at Rhodes University. He has eight years of experience in learning and development in both the corporate and education sectors in Southern Africa. His areas of interest involve the design, development, management, and implementation of open educational technologies such as Moodle and open education resources (OERs).

http://www.saide.org.za/resources/newsletters/Vol_16_no.4_2010/Content/SDL%20case%20study%2030%20Aug10.doc

http://www.saide.org.za/resources/newsletters/Vol_16_no.4_2010/Content/SDL%20case%20study%2030%20Aug10.doc

http://www.oerafrica.org/supportinglearners/SAIDE/tabid/996/Default.aspx

http://www.ncte.ie/elearningplan/roadmap/


Addressing the Local in Localization: A Case Study of Open Textbook Adoption By Three South African Teachers

ADDRESSING THE LOCAL IN LOCALIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF OPEN TEXTBOOK ADOPTION BY THREE SOUTH AFRICAN TEACHERS

Cynthia Jimes, Shenandoah Weiss, Renae Keep Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education

ABSTRACT This article presents a case study of the adoption and use of open textbooks by three high school teachers in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The textbooks, collaboratively authored and distributed through the South African initiative, Siyavula, are available online and are openly licensed, allowing teachers to freely use, modify, print, and share them with peers. Building on prior research conducted on the Siyavula project, the study consisted of interviews with teachers in South Africa to assess their reasons for adopting open textbooks, and their experiences using Siyavula’s open textbooks in the classroom. The study revealed that beyond the cost-savings and flexible printing possibilities afforded by using open textbooks, the teachers’ adoption and use of the open textbooks were tied to the local nature of the textbooks, as well as the localization opportunities made possible through open licensing. Specifically, the study revealed the importance of content rooted in the cultural and geographic contexts in which teachers teach—for example, through authentic scenarios and accessible texts for students and teachers to work with. Moreover, because the Siyavula textbooks were collaboratively written by local field experts and scholars, the content was viewed by the teachers as higher in quality than proprietary textbooks, which often have few authors and are disseminated by large publishing companies. Furthermore, the study found that localization of the textbooks involved not only to the ability to modify and annotate the content to meet classroom needs, but also the ability to meet local socioeconomic constraints, including technological and budgetary limitations. The findings also indicated that the textbooks’ collaborative authorship and possibilities for user modifications facilitated communication about enhancements to the textbook between the textbook authors and the teacher users. On the whole, the findings support nascent, prior research revealing that when open educational resources (OER) are created, developed, and evaluated through processes drawing upon individuals who live and work within the context for which the OER are being created, the end result is more useable. The results of the study support the need for further research in other settings globally, centering on, for example, the role of collaborative authorship in relation to perceived quality of content. KEY WORDS Open educational resources, open textbooks, South African education, localization, collaborative authorship, case study

I. INTRODUCTION

According to recent data from the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality, fewer than half of South African students nationwide have their own math textbooks [1]. In order to begin to address this and other longstanding textbook shortfalls in South Africa, a grassroots initiative was founded in Cape Town in 2002 to produce free science and math textbooks for high school students [2]. The initiative, which grew into a project called “Siyavula” (a Nguni word meaning “we are



opening”), produces open textbooks, which are freely available for download and adaptation to local classroom settings [2]. Siyavula’s open textbooks, published under a Creative Commons license [3], are part of an emerging worldwide movement promoting online distribution of openly licensed digital materials, or open educational resources (OER) [2, 4–9]. Ranging from lesson modules to full courses, from streaming videos to open textbooks, OER have been cited for their potential to serve as an equitable alternative to the rising costs and increasing commercialization of education by making available high-quality teaching and learning resources that can be freely used, shared, and modified by educators to suit local instructional needs [10–15]. Because the use of OER invites engagement with curriculum materials, it offers opportunities for teachers to build their capacities as educators and content creators, contributing to the development of a participatory culture of learning, and to the alignment of curriculum with local education standards [16–20]. To support these possibilities for the use of OER in underresourced schools—from access to needed resources, to reuse and implementation in local classrooms—the literature from the field has called attention to several factors. Several scholars, for example, point to the importance of enabling users to download or print the resources—especially for communities of users who do not have access to the Internet [14, 21–24]. Other scholars highlight the role of locally developed resources, and argue that when resources are developed and evaluated by individuals who are working within, or are familiar with, the context of the community for which the resources are intended, the resources are easier to adapt and localize by end users [21, 23–26]. Moreover, inclusive and collaborative processes for OER development have been cited as significant to the perceived quality of the resources [6, 21, 27–28]. In light of this scholarship, there remains a need for further examination into how these factors relate to specific cases of OER adoption and use. Because the Siyavula initiative specifically seeks to support teachers in the adoption, use, and reuse of open textbooks for teaching math and science in underresourced schools in South Africa, it provides an instance for deepening knowledge in this emerging field [2, 6, 21]. The present study extends prior research conducted on the Siyavula project over the past five years, which has traced a path from the grassroots, collaborative creation of Siyavula’s open educational resources [2, 6] to conditions and scenarios for the use of these resources [21]. The present study continues to trace that path, through an in-depth examination of the experiences of three teachers engaged in the process of adopting and using Siyavula’s Everything Science and Everything Maths textbooks at a school in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, a region noted for shortfalls in instructional resources [1]. Drawing on insights obtained through prior research on the project, as well as data from interviews with the three teachers, the study at hand seeks to assess the teachers’ reasons for adopting Siyavula’s resources, and their experiences using open resources in the classroom. In doing so, the study aims to illuminate ways to further support the adoption and use of OER in underresourced settings.

II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

While free-to-use open educational resources offer plausible alternatives for underresourced schools, infrastructural issues—such as limited access to costly broadband Internet—have surfaced within the education literature as a significant obstacle to OER adoption [10–11, 14–15, 22–24, 29–30]. Efforts to increase OER accessibility in underresourced school settings include, for example, the international initiative for Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies (BLOSSOMS), which developed a blended technology approach for its repository of educational high school math and science videos, including CD, DVD, and videotape formats [14]. Recent research in sub-Saharan Africa has added weight to the importance of such initiatives. Ngimwa and Wilson conducted empirical research on the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) project, and found that alternative formats for OER, such as print, CDs, and cached versions of digital formats enabled teachers from Uganda and Kenya to access and use OER under conditions of limited Internet availability [23]. Furthermore, a study by Wolfendon et al. on the process of OER adaptation for newly trained primary- and secondary-level educators from the TESSA project found that many educators relied on a mixture of new and old media in order to revise and



improve materials and solicit input from local educators [24]. Beyond adaptations to infrastructural constraints, research suggests that a key factor in the uptake and adoption of OER is the local development of the OER by individuals living and working within the users’ own context [21, 23, 25–26, 28]. For instance, Ngimwa and Wilson underscored local provenance as a prime reason for participants’ acceptance of TESSA OER [23]. Specifically, Ngimwa and Wilson found an overall positive response to OER among participating educators, which was attributed to the fact that the content was locally developed and therefore required few adaptations to be culturally localized for home contexts [23]. Such context-specific OER may preclude widespread reuse in other settings, however, as several scholars have noted that it is highly decontextualized OER that are reusable in the greatest number of learning situations [31–32]. However, decontextualized OER can be the most expensive and difficult to localize [31–32]. As Sapire, Reed, and others have noted (e.g., Huberman and Wilkinson), collaborative, inclusive processes involved in the creation of OER may serve as indicators for resource quality and usability [27– 28, 33]. Specifically, among educators participating in the South African Institute of Distance Education’s Advanced Certificate in Education, Mathematics (ACEMaths), Sapire and Reed found that the inclusion in the design team of colleagues from a range of local institutions sparked useful debates and facilitated insights into common mathematics education standards, which resulted in improved quality resources and increased levels of OER adoption and use [28]. Moreover, collaborative processes have also been found to contribute to the continuous improvement of OER, through such mechanisms as user ratings and quality reviews [6, 27, 33]. In this regard, Li et al. examined an international, standardized model for evaluation of online resources: the model involved distributed networks of teachers, students, researchers and designers, which in turn required transcultural localization of categories and terms [34]. From this work, Li et al. concluded that reliable quality assurance must be localized; that is, professional communities globally need to use local terms that arise from shared community practices in order to evaluate and retrieve OER [34]. A more informal model for OER quality assurance emerged in a recent study by Petrides et al., which found that community college instructors’ decisions to adopt open textbooks were, in part, impacted by recommendations from trusted colleagues [35]. In light of the scholarship revealing the importance of local, collaborative development of OER to adoption and use, there remains a gap in understanding how these factors relate to specific cases of OER adoption and use. The present study begins to fill that gap by extending prior research conducted on the Siyavula project over the past five years [2, 6, 21]. The first phase of this research was conducted in 2007 on an earlier iteration of the Siyavula initiative, Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) [2, 6]. Specifically, this research sought to assess the collaborative, peer-based authorship model for OER that had been employed within the project [2, 6]. The study found that the collaborative model involved leveraging local resources, including a partnership with junior engineers at a South African chemical company, who engaged in creating chemistry content for the project’s science textbooks [2]. Moreover, the study revealed how Siyavula employed a two-tiered strategy for promoting resource adoption and use, which involved sponsoring teacher professional development workshops, collaborative textbook-writing events, and other professional opportunities for individual teachers throughout South Africa, while project leaders also cultivated relationships with district-level administrators and other key stakeholders, to encourage support for local teachers in adopting and using open textbooks in their schools [2]. A subsequent study on the Siyavula project was conducted in 2009–10 by the present authors to assess early indicators of OER adoption by South African teachers who had been introduced to the resources through Siyavula workshops [21]. Based on a survey of teachers participating in the workshops, the study revealed that the majority of the 27 survey respondents accessed OER in the six months following the workshops in order to find activities and reading materials for their students, and to get ideas for new lessons [21]. The study further showed that, when asked to indicate the ways that Siyavula’s resources had benefited their roles as teachers, more than half of the teachers indicated that it supported their development of curriculum materials, and nearly half reported that Siyavula supported their professional development as teachers [21]. The present study builds upon insights from this research, and offers a



more in-depth examination of three South African educators’ decisions to adopt Siyavula OER—and specifically its open textbooks—including the ways in which they use the open textbooks in the classroom. The section that follows discusses the methods employed to conduct the study.

III. METHODOLOGY

The case study was chosen as the method for research because it is appropriate to a detailed interpretive analysis of the dynamics of a single research setting [37–39]. Employing an inductive process that draws upon a set of practices, activities, and/or perceptions within a specific setting or situation, the case study serves to generate a picture of that setting in order to elucidate specific research questions [39]. Accordingly, the case study was selected for this study in order to develop an understanding of the teachers’ decisions to adopt Siyavula’s open textbooks, and the ways in which they experienced the use of those resources in the classroom setting. The Andersburg School was chosen as a research setting in the spring of 2011 [36], when Siyavula project leaders were asked to recommend individual teachers who might agree to be interviewed about their reasons for adopting open textbooks as primary resources in their classrooms. In turn, Andersburg stood out as a particularly interesting study site, given that three teachers—representing the school’s entire secondary-level science and math department—had adopted Siyavula’s open textbooks. Data were gathered through structured interviews with the teachers and visits to the Andersburg School site. Three in-person interviews, ranging from 28–52 minutes in length, were conducted in May 2011. Interview questions sought to assess factors impacting teachers’ decisions to adopt Siyavula’s open textbooks as primary textbooks in the classroom, as well as the ways in which they had used the open textbooks in the classroom. Two subsequent interviews were conducted with Siyavula project leaders in May and June 2012 to add context to the teacher interview data. In addition, one of the teachers was available for a follow-up interview of approximately 1.5 hours, which was conducted in July 2012, in order to further explore themes that emerged from the first set of interviews. The interview data were subsequently coded and analyzed according to thematic categories drawn from the review of literature, as well as themes that emerged from an initial analysis of the interviews themselves, and from the above-mentioned prior research on the Siyavula initiative. The occurrence and variance of codes were analyzed to arrive at common themes among the interview participants. The resulting themes, including locally authored texts, localized resources, and collaborative authorship, are discussed in section V. It is important to note that the generalizability of the study is limited due to the small number of educators included. However, in addition to providing insights into the actions and perspectives of teachers in a single setting, the study offers a starting point for scholars gathering data from educators in future contexts, as well as a grounded perspective on larger issues within the emerging field of OER scholarship.

IV. CASE PRESENTATION A. Overview of Study Site and Participants The Andersburg School is an independent, coeducational, multiracial, and nondenominational Christian academy located in a medium-sized city near the geographical center of South Africa (in the KwaZulu- Natal Province) [40]. Founded in 1987, Andersburg serves grades 4–12, enrolling roughly fifty students in each grade. Classes are capped at twenty-six, but they are often much smaller, with many classes attended by as few as nine or ten students. Andersburg’s teachers typically share classroom space and equipment. Students and teachers have only limited access to the school’s one computer lab and other technology, and Internet services are slow and unreliable. However, Andersburg’s teachers described their access to technology and familiarity with OER as atypically high, nationally.



In their final year of school, Andersburg’s students are expected to pass examinations conducted by South Africa’s Independent Examinations Board—a government-sponsored assessment body that seeks to ensure that schools comply with international academic standards. However, while these exams help to define the basic parameters of the curriculum and the content to be covered, the school’s faculty members determine the precise design of their individual courses and select the textbooks and other materials for their classes. Thus, when one of Andersburg’s three science/math teachers (whom we call George Hudson) approached one of his colleagues (Walter Gomez) and recommended that he adopt the Siyavula initiative’s open textbook for use in his classes (as Hudson had just done in his grade 10 Physical Science class), and when Gomez recommended them to a third colleague (Mosa Memela), all were free to adopt and use those materials as they saw fit [36]. None of the three math/science teachers had been at the school for longer than two years. Mosa Memela was in her first year of teaching at Andersburg, while both George Hudson and Walter Gomez were in their second year of teaching there. Hudson was teaching science, Memela was teaching mathematics, and Gomez was teaching mathematics and science. The following presentation constructs a narrative of the case study findings, wherein each teacher’s story is presented in turn, drawing on excerpts from the teachers’ interview responses. A discussion of the results of analysis follows thereafter in section V.

B. George Hudson When he arrived at Andersburg, Hudson explained, he began the year expecting to use the grade 10 science textbook, which was a hardcover commercial title used in many South African schools, and which had been left to him by his predecessor. However, he quickly discovered that he could not teach effectively with the given materials. As he put it:

I couldn’t figure out where the stuff was in the textbook. You’d go through it and…what are we supposed to be getting at here? I’ve got my degree, but it’s not obvious to any mortal in finite time what is happening here. So I started looking around for other material, fairly desperately.

Further, he noted, the school’s more advanced students, especially, were not well served by either the existing textbook or the other science resources the school was using. “We were lost,” Hudson declared. Given his familiarity with the Internet and its search engines, Hudson explained, he was able to find Siyavula’s Everything Science series of open textbooks, which impressed him for several reasons. First was the overall quality of the resources: “A+ for content. Really, it’s as good as it gets—doesn’t have to get any better.” Second was their clarity. “There’s a lot of science [content] on the web. The problem is that there is too much,” Hudson observed, remarking that the Siyavula content rendered scientific information in a digestible manner that also enabled the communication of knowledge to his students. The fact that the textbook was produced in South Africa by South Africans was another important element, Hudson reported: “It didn’t have to be [locally produced], but that really made a difference.” Local production particularly mattered because the textbooks’ authors used language that was “accessible to second language speakers.” Hudson explained the need for accessible language in his classes: “I have English kids, Zulu kids, a French [speaking] kid who started learning English last year—he is from [the Democratic Republic of the Congo]—Afrikaans, Swahili. I can get up to five home languages in one class.” Also, Hudson explained that he knew a free textbook would be attractive to his students and their families. Andersburg charges only half as much as competing schools, he explained, but even that tuition is extremely difficult for many of its students to afford:

The headmaster has just gone to get a pair of shoes for one of the kids who had their shoes stolen and been walking around in funny [sneakers] for just a little too long. We have a number of kids on both streets here. We don’t have marble tiles. So finding money for more textbooks…the parents were going to have a nervous breakdown, well half of them.



Likewise, Hudson saw the fact that Siyavula publishes under an open license as an advantage because it meant that he could print and distribute hard copies [3]. He knew printing the book would introduce some cost into the equation, but it also would allow him to get the materials into everybody’s hands, which would be impossible otherwise given the school’s limited number of computers and its spotty Internet access. Hudson explained, “As it turns out, one of our staff members’ dad runs one of the big printing companies in town, so I said, ‘How cheaply can you print these PDFs?’” The printer agreed to do so for only the cost of the materials, Hudson reported, which meant that the expense for students would still be fairly low. “Now we just put it on the school fees—you pay 50 Rand, get over it—[and] every kid in my class has a textbook as soon as I’m organized enough.” The advantages of the printable open textbooks go well beyond the initial cost-savings, Hudson added. For one thing, the consequences of losing one’s book are not as severe as those of losing a commercial text: “I’m not beating [on] Johnny, [asking] ‘Where is your textbook?’ [If] Johnny loses his textbook, I call up [the printer] and say I need one more, and about a week later…it’s here. It’s really a nice model.” And, second, this allows students to hold onto their textbooks over time, which is important because Andersburg teaches a three-year course of study in the sciences, meaning that students in grades 11 and 12 often have to return to material they began studying in grade 10. Since the cost of producing printed versions of the Siyavula textbook is so minimal, Hudson explained, students “can afford not to resell them,” which means they can mark them up (with pencil or pen), come back to them as needed, and use them to study for their examinations at the end of high school. In this regard, Siyavula’s open license also meant that Hudson and his students could modify the textbooks to suit their purposes [3], and that Hudson could send editorial suggestions directly to the publisher. Hudson explained that, while he considered the texts top quality, a first edition of one of the texts contained an error in the chemistry diagrams, which he and his students were able to emend —both within their current textbooks, and for future editions.

C. Walter Gomez Like Hudson, Gomez also noted that as a relatively new teacher (he was then in his second year of teaching, both years at Andersburg), he found the clarity of the Siyavula materials to be quite helpful:

The Siyavula open textbook is self-explanatory. … It explains the exercises quite well, very basic. It’s accessible [and] easy, if I’m not in the classroom for whatever reason, for [the students] to just go to the textbook. I call and say, “Listen, they have to do page 230,” and it’s easy for them to read and do it on their own. It’s not too complicated.

And, like Hudson, Gomez noted that the open license gives him the option to print copies of the textbook [3], which is important given the limitations of Andersburg’s classroom technology:

We aren’t fancy. We don’t have Smart Boards, I have used them before when I was doing my training at other schools. It’s definitely an aid, it makes a difference, when you have a Smart Board connected to the Internet, connected to the computer. … But at the moment, we do what [we] can. I’m trying to make the best out of it.

Furthermore, in regard to the budgetary constraints of many Andersburg students, Walter Gomez also took note of the cost-savings offered by the textbooks: “It’s online. It’s cheap. … The only thing you have to pay [for] is the paper. I thought it would be a good way to save a little bit of money for the students, because a lot of the kids… they battle to get the books.” Unlike Hudson, Gomez spoke about the challenges involved in persuading others to adopt and use open textbooks. However, at Andersburg there was no need to convince administrators: “They trust me on my judgment,” Gomez observed. “So as long as I’m happy… and the kids are responding well, and the standard has not dropped, they don’t interfere.” But in order to bring other teachers on board, he specified, it is important to anticipate and respond to their concerns. In this regard, Gomez reported: “I talked to other teachers [about using the Siyavula open textbook]. Mr. [Hudson] convinced me, so I wanted to convince the others. The reaction was ‘Free textbook? Hmm…’” He added:



But then what I did was I showed them the first page of the [textbook, showing the] people who have been involved, and I told them, “This is actually not written by one person, it’s actually written by 30–40 people, so what are the chances that it’s not good? And it’s free, and it will cut the cost of education.” And all of that. And then… they got convinced.

For Gomez, the fact that the textbooks were produced by a large team of authors, many of them faculty from prestigious South African universities, appeared to be a particularly important selling point, helping to establish the credibility of the resources:

I think [teachers’] initial reaction is [to notice that the textbook is] online, free, no errors. That’s the initial thing. But after they get to see it, it’s actually quite good. It’s actually quite a bit better than a lot of the textbooks that we’ve had. It’s… trustworthy, you know, [because the] people who got involved in it are people that know this stuff.

Moreover, added Gomez, the number of people involved in drafting and revising the Siyavula textbooks helps also to guarantee the quality of the materials:

I don’t think I’ve found any errors in it yet. However, I do remember other textbooks where I [kept finding errors] all the time. … I think because so many people are involved with it, it’s easier for everyone to pick up the mistake and report it back and say listen, fix this. So I think that’s the strength of [Siyavula’s] system, you can actually get as close as possible to create the perfect textbook.

As a result, Gomez adds, he has become a strong supporter of Siyavula’s textbooks, and he believes that South Africa would “do well to adopt them for use across the country”:

The fact that learning can be unified, using one textbook—and it’s free and it’s trustworthy, you know—has shown me that this is the way to progress, that this is the way that we should go, you know? Because now, maybe it’s just the way I see it, I would love to see one textbook for the entire country, but a textbook that is worth it.

D. Mosa Memela Like Gomez, who credited Hudson for recommending Siyavula’s textbooks, Mosa Memela credited Gomez for bringing them to her attention:

When I first came into this school, I was told I was hired to teach maths. … I looked at Classroom Maths, which is one of the textbooks available at this school, and I was happy to use it if it was the only book available. But when I spoke to my colleague Walter Gomez, he told me about [the Siyavula textbook]. He suggested, actually, that I use it because he’s used it and it’s very good. So I had a look at his copy, and I was very happy to have him download it for us.

In particular, Memela said, she was won over by the fact that the resources were free: I mean, if you read [the] beginning of the book, you think, “Oh, there’s a catch somewhere, definitely.” And it’s just amazing that [it’s] free. You don’t see that these days, so... you become more appreciative of the book, because you think the people behind it are not in it to make money. It’s [for the] development of people who are using [it]. [F]or me, that’s really significant.

Similarly, she pointed to the flexibility provided by Siyavula’s open license [3]: “With [a commercial textbook] you cannot make printed copies of it. … But with this, I’m at liberty to make copies and give it to my learners… so I [like] the fact it’s easy to reproduce and that there are no restrictions.” Like Hudson, Memela reported that she appreciated not just the overall quality of the text but, more specifically, the accessible style in which it was written:

I find that the book has a way of talking to you. It’s not like your normal maths book that would just have practical examples but not really give you authentic scenarios to the work that you’re working with. So I found that using what I learned from the book to just explain to my learners, [made] the work quite easy to understand for them, and also for me as I study. Like I was looking



at calculus, the way they explain it, it’s quite simple and nice. [It] is for normal people, not for geniuses.

Finally, and much like Gomez, Memela took the long list of Siyavula’s contributing authors, including faculty from South African universities, to be a powerful indicator of the materials’ quality and credibility:

It’s lots of minds getting together. It makes you have more faith—let me put it that way—in the book, to say, this must be the best. … I mean some of [the open textbook authors] are [PhDs]. It’s educated people. It’s not, you know, a bunch of students trying to come up with something for a PhD or a master’s degree. It’s people that are really qualified and that have had experience, so you really feel like you’re part of this professional thing.

In closing, Memela stated that she would likely, in turn, recommend the textbook to her colleagues going forward, on the basis of her experience.

V. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

The analysis of the case material revealed that the practices and perceptions involved in adopting and using Siyavula’s textbooks centered around three primary themes: the importance of locally authored texts, of resources that could be localized, and of collaborative authorship. Each of these is discussed in turn below.

A. Locally Developed Texts The case study analysis revealed the importance of content that is rooted in the cultural contexts in which the teachers teach. In particular, the Andersburg teachers emphasized the importance of content that demonstrated a clear, reader-friendly style and tone that was accessible to students. All three teachers noted that these features were particularly helpful to them, given that South Africa relies on a common language of instruction (primarily English), which is not a home language for large numbers of students. As George Hudson explained, it “really made a difference” that Siyavula’s authors used “language that was accessible to second-language speakers.” In line with prior work by scholars including Selinger, Albright, and Ngimwa and Wilson, these findings underscore the importance of the language, style, and tone of OER content to the adoption and use of OER [10, 23, 26]. Moreover, Memela observed that the accessible language and style used in the open textbook extended to its “authentic scenarios,” which, as Memela reported, made the math “quite easy to understand” for the students. While the importance of authentic scenarios, in particular, aligns with scholarship supporting the need for OER content that is attuned to specific cultural contexts [10, 13, 23, 26], the finding also suggests that authentic scenarios contribute positively to student learning. The analysis further points to the role of locally developed content in contributing to the adoption of open textbooks. In this regard, all three of the Andersburg teachers called attention to the fact that the materials had been produced with the participation of well-respected faculty members at prestigious South African universities—“people that are really qualified and that have had experience,” as Memela put it. Moreover, this well-respected local development, deemed “trustworthy” by Gomez, facilitated collegial endorsements of the text by both Hudson and Gomez. In this case, local development enabled reference to commonly recognized authorities, an informal model of quality assurance, in accord with findings by Petrides et al. on the uptake of open textbooks among U.S. community college faculty, and in line with Li et al. on the need for localized terms of quality assurance [34–35].

B. Localization The case study provides evidence for the importance of OER content that can be localized—that is, adapted in order to meet local classroom needs. Hudson and his students were able to localize the materials by modifying and customizing them through instructor and student annotations in order to suit their purposes. In this case, however, adaptations were inextricably bound up with the logistics of access



to information. As Hudson pointed out, because it is relatively affordable, even by South African standards, to produce hard copies of digital materials, students are able to own their textbooks, take notes in them, work out problems in the margins, hold onto them over time, and refer back to them when they study for their end-of-school examinations. Thus, localization in this case involved a blended approach to using OER, leveraging Internet technology and the skills of the classroom teacher. On the whole, Andersburg’s teachers viewed the flexible printing afforded by Siyavula’s open license as a significant factor in their use of the open textbooks [3] because it allowed them to take advantage of free digital materials even though their students had only spotty access to computers, the Internet, and other interactive technologies. Specifically, the Andersburg teachers utilized the Internet to find and access the open textbook, which they distributed directly to their students. While these findings concerning blended technological approaches concur with reports from research in conjunction with the TESSA initiative and the BLOSSOMS initiative [14, 23] and align with findings from previous research on the Siyavula initiative [21], the present study reframes technological barriers to OER use by situating them in light of the demonstrated need for localizing resources through adaptations to local constraints. According to this adjusted definition, localization involves adapting content to fit local cultural needs, including meeting local logistical constraints that impact access to information, such as limited technology and distribution channels, as well as limited student budgets.

C. Collaborative Authorship Because the Siyavula textbooks were collaboratively written by multiple local field experts and scholars, the content was viewed by the Andersburg teachers as higher in quality than single-author proprietary textbooks. In line with prior work by Sapire and Reed, this finding suggests that grassroots collaborative authorship may potentially support perceptions concerning the quality of OER. Furthermore, in accord with work by Huberman and Wilkinson, the study found that both Gomez and Memela noted that the participation of a large number of authors in creating Siyavula’s textbooks was a compelling indication of those textbooks’ quality [27–28]. Moreover, as Memela reported, because many prominent academics were involved in the creation of Siyavula’s materials, using those materials seemed to be the “professional” thing to do, a finding that concurs with prior research on the Siyavula project, which demonstrated that Siyavula recruited large numbers of experts to participate in creating its textbooks, in order to build a sense of professional community [2]. In addition, Hudson noted that collaborative authorship of the open textbooks extends to the user. Specifically, Hudson reported that he valued the ability to send editorial suggestions, corrections, and other feedback directly to the publisher, toward improving the quality of the subsequent iteration of the textbook. In this sense, the study provides an educator’s perspective on the insights of scholars who have noted that the decentralized development of OER contributes to increased quality [20, 33], and that efforts exerted by engaged users drive improvements in OER [2, 5-6].

VI. STUDY IMPLICATIONS

The present case study provides insight into the practices and perceptions that played a role in the decisions of three high school teachers to adopt Siyavula’s Everything Science and Everything Maths books as their primary course texts, as well as their methods for using the book in their classrooms. Moreover, the study points to several issues for further research into the adoption and use of open textbooks by groups of teachers throughout South Africa as well as in other settings. These issues include the importance of locally developed, culturally relevant content, and its potential for enhancing learning through materials that are logistically and stylistically accessible. The study’s finding that the Andersburg teachers valued the Siyavula open textbooks for their reader- friendly style and tone, and especially their use of language accessible to students for whom English is not a home language, suggests that locally created OER are more likely to facilitate engagement and connection on the part of learners. This understanding concerning the importance of locally developed, culturally attuned content finds support in educational theories in the field of mathematics and science



regarding the importance of situated learning that acquires relevance and meaning for students as it fosters recognition of their social and cultural values [41–43]. In this regard, the finding suggests potential for learning transformation: when learners are able to connect with accessible resources, they are empowered to assume authority for their learning. While this implication concurs with recent research conducted on open textbooks [35], further research is required to discern possible connections between locally developed OER and learning outcomes. Ideally, such research would not only measure student outcomes data, but also access student perceptions and experiences in relation to the use of OER. Moreover, given that for the Andersburg teachers the localization of open textbook resources was inextricably tied to local logistical constraints involved in information access and distribution, the study suggests the need for an adjusted definition of localization. Specifically, the findings imply a need to move the discussion of OER localization beyond the parameters of content adaptation through modifications, such as translation, annotation, editing, and remixing, toward a definition of localization that takes into account the socioeconomic diversity within institutions, and especially the infrastructural challenges encountered in underresourced schools. This suggestion implies that technology challenges, which have frequently figured in the literature as barriers to OER participation [e.g., 4, 10–11, 22, 29], may be reframed usefully as challenges for localization. In this regard, the study opens lines for exploring ways in which localization involves adapting content to fit local cultural needs, including meeting local logistical constraints that impact information access and distribution. Furthermore, while the finding that locally recognizable, collaborative authorship figured as a key factor in perceptions of the OER as high in quality and trustworthy aligns with previous research conducted on collaborative content and quality perception [27–28], it also indicates a need for research aimed at better understanding of the role of collaborative authorship in generating user confidence in OER. Given that locally recognizable authorship also figured as an important factor in facilitating collegial textbook recommendations among the Andersburg teachers, the finding implies the need for research on incentivizing factors for open textbook adoption in the K–12 arena to complement extant scholarship on this issue in higher education [35]. In addition, the finding that one of the teachers (Hudson) valued the ability to provide user feedback to the publisher implies the potential inherent in OER for cultivating and empowering educators as content creators involved in contributing to the development of a participatory culture of learning. Lastly, given that the participants deemed their access to technology and familiarity with OER as atypical, nationally, it may well be that the Andersburg study findings point toward an optimistic future for South African teachers, as technology advances and Internet bandwidth access become more widely available. While the curricular autonomy permitted to independent schoolteachers, relative to their state school counterparts, distinguishes the Andersburg study findings from the broader national context, a noteworthy postscript to the study indicates that Siyavula recently succeeded in establishing nationwide state-school distribution of its open textbook in print form. Although the distribution of the textbooks was reportedly delayed due to complications in the governmental distribution channels, the recognition of the project at the national level nevertheless points toward its curricular relevancy and timeliness in meeting educational resource needs, in addition to its merits as an alternative, localized education resource production model. In this regard, Siyavula’s collaborative content development strategy has the potential to serve as a model for independent entities that may join forces with students, teachers, and government employees to facilitate not only the production and distribution of educational resources, but also the larger conversations about the need for open, locally aligned content.

VII. CONCLUSION

In examining the practices and perceptions that prompted three teachers working at one high school to adopt Siyavula’s Everything Science and Everything Maths open textbooks as their primary course texts, the present case study found that the teachers’ reasons for adopting the textbooks and ways of using them were tied to the localization opportunities made possible through open licensing, as well as the local nature of the textbooks. Specifically, the case study reveals the importance of content that can be



modified and annotated to meet classroom needs, as well as the importance of content that is rooted in the cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic contexts in which the teachers teach. Furthermore, because the textbooks were collaboratively written by local field experts and scholars, the content was viewed by the teachers as higher in quality than proprietary textbooks, which often have few authors and are disseminated by large publishing companies. The findings also indicate that the textbooks’ collaborative authorship and possibilities for user modifications opened avenues for revisions geared toward improving the quality of the textbooks. On the whole, the findings support nascent, prior research in Africa revealing that locally produced OER developed from the end-user perspective plays an important role in teachers’ decisions to adopt and use the content. Given the limitations of the present case study, the results support the need for further research in other settings globally, investigating the significance of collaborative authorship to perceived quality of content, as well as the significance of content that can be localized by teachers to meet teaching and learning needs. As such, this case study opens up research opportunities for further exploration into the ways in which local content rooted in end-user needs and contexts can in turn serve as a model for the localization of OER in future, global settings.

VIII. REFERENCES

1. Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ). The SACMEQ III Project in South Africa: A Study of the Conditions of Schooling and the Quality of Education, 2010. http://www.sacmeq.org/downloads/National%20Reports%20SIII/S3_South_Africa_Final.pdf

2. Petrides, L. and Jimes, C. Building Open Educational Resources from the Ground Up: South Africa's Free High School Science Texts. Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) 7 (2008). http://jime.open.ac.uk/jime/article/viewArticle/2008-7/339

3. Siyavula’s open textbooks are published under a Creative Commons CC BY license, which allows unlimited use and modification of the work, stipulating attribution of the work to the original author. Other “open” licenses under Creative Commons include: 1) Attribution- ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), which provides similar freedoms and further stipulates that the same license be applied to derivatives; 2) Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND), which allows for use and sharing, through both commercial and noncommercial redistribution, but prohibits derivative works; 3) Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), which allows for the remixing of content noncommercially, but does not stipulate that the same license be applied to derivatives; 4) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA), which grants the freedoms of reuse and redistribution but limits them to noncommercial uses, and requires the same license be applied to derivatives; and 5) Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows use and sharing but stipulates noncommercial use only, with author attribution, and prohibits derivative works. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/.

4. D’Antoni, S. Open Educational Resources, The Way Forward. UNESCO/IIEP, 2008. http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/oer-way-forward-final-version.pdf

5. Frydenberg, J. and Matkin, G. Open Textbooks: Why? What? How? When? Proceedings from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Open Textbook Meeting, Newport Beach, 2007. http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/OpenTextbooks.pdf

6. Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). Creating, Doing, and Sustaining OER: Lessons From Six Open Educational Resource Projects. Half Moon Bay, CA: ISKME, 2008. http://www.iskme.org/publications?page=1

7. Matkin, G. Open Learning: What Do Open Textbooks Tell Us About the Revolution in Education? Center for Studies in Higher Education, Research & Occasional Paper Series 1(9): 1–7 (March 2009). http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1b20t36z

http://www.sacmeq.org/downloads/National%20Reports%20SIII/S3_South_Africa_Final.pdf

http://jime.open.ac.uk/jime/article/viewArticle/2008-7/339

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/oer-way-forward-final-version.pdf

http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/OpenTextbooks.pdf

http://www.iskme.org/publications?page=1

http://www.iskme.org/publications?page=1

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1b20t36z



8. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Giving Knowledge for

Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources. Paris, France: OECD Publications, 2007. http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38654317.pdf

9. Seidel, K. Online Textbooks Deliver Timely, Real World Content. Educause Review 44(1): 28– 30. (January/February 2009). http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/online-textbooks-deliver- timely-real-world-content

10. Albright, P. UNESCO IIEP Final Report, 2005. http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/IIEP_OER.pdf

11. Foster, A.L. Providing Online Textbooks to the Developing World. Education Digest 73(7): 14– 16 (2008).

12. Ishii, K. and Lutterbeck, B. Unexploited Resources of Online Education for Democracy: Why the Future Should Belong to Open Courseware. First Monday 6(11): (November 2001). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/896

13. Kanwar, A., Khodhandaraman, B., and Umar, A. Toward Sustainable Open Education Resources: A Perspective from the Global South. American Journal of Distance Education 24(2): 65–80 (2010).

14. Larson, R.C. and Murray, E. Open Educational Resources for Blended Learning in High Schools: Overcoming Impediments in Developing Countries. Journal for Asynchronous Learning Networks 12: 85–103 (2008).

15. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries: Final Report. Paris: UNESCO, 2002. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001285/128515e.pdf

16. Attwell, G. and Pumilia, P.M. The New Pedagogy of Open Content: Bringing Together Production, Knowledge, Development, and Learning. Data Science Journal 6: 211–219 (2007).

17. Casserly, C. and Smith, M. Revolutionizing Education Through Innovation: Can Openness Transform Teaching and Learning? In Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education Through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Jumar, 261–276 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262515016_Open_Access_Edition.pd f

18. Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). Composing Possibilities: Open Education Resources and K-12 Music Education. Half Moon Bay, CA: ISKME, 2013. http://iskme.org/publications/composing-possibilities-open-education-resources- and-k-12-music-education

19. Livingston, K. and Condie, R. The Impact of an Online Learning Program on Teaching and Learning Strategies. Theory Into Practice 45(2): 150–158 (2006).

20. Stephensen, R. Open Source/Open Course Learning: Lessons for Educators from Free and Open Source Software. Innovate Journal of Online Education 3(1): (October/November 2006). http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol3_issue1/Open_Source_Open_Course_Learning-

Lessons_for_Educators_from_Free_and_Open_Source_Software.pdf. 21. Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). Siyavula

Evaluation. Unpublished raw data, 2010. 22. Wilson, T. New Ways of Mediating Learning: Investigating the Implications of Adopting Open

Educational Resources for Tertiary Education at an Institution in the United Kingdom as Compared to One in South Africa. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 9(1): 1–19 (2008).

23. Ngimwa, P. and Wilson, T. An Empirical Investigation of the Emergent Issues Around OER Adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa. Learning, Media and Technology 37(4): 398–413 (2012).

http://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38654317.pdf

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/online-textbooks-deliver-timely-real-world-content



http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/IIEP_OER.pdf

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/896

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001285/128515e.pdf

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262515016_Open_Access_Edition.pdf



http://iskme.org/publications/composing-possibilities-open-education-resources-and-k-12-music-education



http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol3_issue1/Open_Source_Open_Course_Learning-__Lessons_for_Educators_from_Free_and_Open_Source_Software.pdf

http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol3_issue1/Open_Source_Open_Course_Learning-__Lessons_for_Educators_from_Free_and_Open_Source_Software.pdf



85

24. Wolfenden, F., Buckler, A., and Keraro, F. OER Adaptation and Reuse Across Cultural

Contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa). Journal of Interactive Media in Education (2012). http://www- jime.open.ac.uk/article/2012-03/pdf

25. Recker, M., Dorward, J., and Nelson, L.M. Discovery and Use of Online Learning Resources: Case Study Findings. Educational Technology and Society 7(2): 93–104 (2004).

26. Selinger, M. Cultural and Pedagogical Implications of a Global E-learning Programme. Cambridge Journal of Education 34: 223–239 (2004).

27. Huberman, B.A. and Wilkinson, D.M. Assessing the Value of Cooperation in Wikipedia (2007). http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0702140.pdf

28. Sapire, I. and Reed, Y. Collaborative Design and Use of Open Educational Resources: A Case Study of a Mathematics Teacher Education Project in South Africa. Distance Education 32(2): 195–211 (August 2011).

29. Hattaka, M. Build It and Will They Come? – Inhibiting Factors for Reuse of Open Content in Developing Countries. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries 37(5): 1–16 (2009). http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2.../index.hp/ejisdc/article/view/545

30. Unwin, T. Towards a Framework for the Use of ICT in Teacher Training in Africa. Open Learning 20: 112–130 (2005).

31. Calverley, G. and Shephard, K. Assisting the Uptake of On-Line Resources: Why Good Learning Resources Are Not Enough. Computers and Education 41: 205–224 (2003).

32. Wiley, D. On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education. OECD (2006). http://www1.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38645447.pdf

33. Hylén, J. Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges (2006). http://www.knowledgeall.net/files/Additional_Readings-Consolidated.pdf

34. Li, J.Z., Nesbit, J.C., and Richards, G. Evaluating Learning Objects Across Boundaries: The Semantics of Localization. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies 4(1): 17– 30 (2006).

35. Petrides, L., Jimes, C., Middleton-Detzner, C., Walling, J., and Weiss, S. Open Textbook Adoption and Use: Implications for Teachers and Learners. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning 26(1): 39–49 (2011).

36. To protect the privacy of the school and the teachers featured in this study, pseudonyms have been used throughout.

37. Eisenhardt, K.M. Building Theories from Case Study Research. The Academy of Management Review 14(4): 532–550 (1989).

38. Walsham, G. Interpretive Case Studies in IS Research: Nature and Method. European Journal of Information Systems 4: 74–81 (1995).

39. Stake, R. The Art of Case Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995. 40. The term “independent” derives from the South African Schools Act (SASA) of 1996. The SASA

created two broad categories of schools: “public” and “independent.” While privately owned schools are termed “independent,” state-run schools, officially termed “public,” are colloquially known as “state” or “government” schools. The present article employs the more commonly recognized “state” school in reference to state-run schools.

41. Boaler, J. The Role of Contexts in the Mathematics Classroom: Do They Make Mathematics More “Real”? For the Learning of Mathematics 13(2): 12–17 (June 1993).

42. Broomes, D. The Mathematical Demands of a Rural Economy. In Mathematics, Education and Society, edited by C. Keitel, P. Damerow, A. Bishop, and P. Gerdes. Paris: United Nations Educational Scientific, 1989.

43. Woodrow, D. Cultural Determination of Curricula, Theories and Practices. Pedagogy, Culture & Society 9(1): 5–27 (2001).

http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/article/2012-03/pdf



http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0702140.pdf

http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2.../index.php/ejisdc/article/view/545

http://www1.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38645447.pdf

http://www.knowledgeall.net/files/Additional_Readings-Consolidated.pdf



IX. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Mark Horner, Founder and Director of Siyavula, Neels van der Westhuizen, Director of Marketing and Sales of Siyavula, Bridget Nash, Community Coordinator of Siyavula, and Carine Grobbelaar, Head of Marketing and Sales of Siyavula, for their contributions to this study. We would also like to thank Rafael Heller for his editorial support.


Cynthia Jimes, PhD, is Director of Research at the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), where she examines the role of knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving in supporting new processes for teaching and learning, as well as for open innovation in education. Prior to joining ISKME, Cynthia worked as an education data specialist at GreatSchools.net and focused on providing parents with data to inform their school choice and school improvement efforts. While living in Sweden and the Netherlands from 1995 to 2004, she worked in both the private and public sectors, holding positions in knowledge management and consulting at McKinsey & Company and Knowledge Values, teaching high school and undergraduate courses, and obtaining her PhD in Information Science from Uppsala University in Sweden. Shenandoah Weiss is Project Manager of Research and Education Programs at the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), where she oversees projects that focus on open educational resources, collaborative teaching and learning practices, and strategies to increase knowledge sharing in learning environments. Shenandoah began contributing to ISKME’s research efforts on the Siyavula initiative in 2009 while living in Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to joining ISKME, Shenandoah received her master’s degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago and has over a decade of experience managing education, arts, and community enrichment programs for nonprofit, museum and government institutions like the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor, Stanford Jazz Workshop, University of Chicago Center for the Presentation of Science, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Renae Keep has contributed to a number of projects as a research and writing consultant for the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) since 2008, including prior research on the Siyavula initiative. Renae earned a doctoral candidacy in Comparative Literature and Textual Studies from the University of Washington in 2003, and currently serves as an instructor in Humanities at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA.


87

Turning the Digital Divide into Digital Dividends Through Free Content and Open Networks: WikiEducator Learning4Content (L4C) Initiative

TURNING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE INTO DIGITAL DIVIDENDS THROUGH FREE CONTENT AND OPEN NETWORKS: WIKIEDUCATOR LEARNING4CONTENT (L4C) INITIATIVE

Patricia Schlicht Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Open Education Resources Foundation (OERF) (Volunteer)

ABSTRACT In today’s world where tuition fees continue to rise rapidly and the demand for higher education increases in both the developing and developed world, it is important to find additional and alternative learning pathways that learners can afford. Traditional education as we have known it has begun to change, allowing for new parallel learning opportunities to take shape and new avenues to open up. This paper describes the world’s largest online training initiative on open education that teaches wiki technology to educators in the formal education sector worldwide. WikiEducator, founded in 2006, initially operated with funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (WFHF) under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organization created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources, and technology. In May 2009, it became its own entity residing under Otago Polytechnic’s International Centre for Open Education Resources under the auspices of the Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF) in Dunedin, New Zealand, where it continues today. WikiEducator’s flagship, the Learning4Content (L4C) project, builds capacity among global educators by teaching wiki technology to newcomers and experts in the field of open education. In exchange for the free training opportunity they receive, participants are asked to create open content on WikiEducator and contribute toward WikiEducator’s strategic objectives. The success of the L4C project helped WikiEducator reach its target number of equipping 2,500 educators with wiki skills to create open educational resources online two years ahead of the initially planned three years and was the reason for a large additional number of novices and experts alike joining the project. Even though many learners make use of the free learning opportunities offered through the L4C project, for those who do not have access to online content—or even computers—WikiEducator has developed a feature called “wiki-to-print,” which allows users to select free and open WikiEducator content and combine it into a book that can be printed and used offline. Distribution of these print-based, compiled books provides an opportunity to those who do not or will never have access to the Internet and technology to gain access to knowledge and information. This paper will describe WikiEducator’s stages of development and the outcomes it has achieved as the world’s largest attempt to build wiki skills among global educators.

KEY WORDS Open Educational Resources, Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), WikiEducator, Learning4Content (L4C) project, Open Educational Resource University (OERu), Open Education Resources Foundation (OERF), Commonwealth of Learning (COL).

Turning the Digital Divide into Digital Dividends through Free Content and Open Networks: WikiEducator Learning4Content (L4C) Initiative


I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

WikiEducator represents a paradigm shift in how work is organized and is an example of a grassroots initiative as opposed to a top-down mandate. It was created for the purpose of building capacity among teachers and educators in the global educator community, developing free learning content, and establishing an international self-organizing community around Open Education Resource (OER) development through peer collaboration. The initiative’s development consists of three phases:

• Phase 1: Establishing foundations (May 2006–December 2007) • Phase 2: Scaling up free content development by starting the L4C project (January–December

2008) • Phase 3: Sustainable implementation of free content development (January 2009–ongoing)

WikiEducator was founded in 2006 and operated with funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (WFHF) under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organization created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources, and technology. After moving on from COL, and becoming its own entity on April 28, 2009, it was incorporated under the New Zealand Companies Act of 1993 and found its new home within the newly founded Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF), an independent nonprofit organization that provides leadership, international networking, and support for educators and educational institutions to achieve their objectives through open education. It came under an Open Education patronage organization, the Otago Polytechnic’s International Centre for Open Education in Dunedin, New Zealand. Dr. Wayne Mackintosh, WikiEducator’s founding director, was appointed by the Otago Polytechnic to continue leading the project at the OERF. The OERF’s focus on scalability, sustainability, and furthering the OER agenda enabled it to facilitate community and stakeholder engagements at multiple levels, incorporating a wide range of learners’ backgrounds in many global regions. In an effort to assist the New Zealand Ministry of Education with the establishment of a national OER commons for the school sector, the OERF secured a strategic grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in 2009. It also continued to receive financial support from the COL in Vancouver, Canada, WikiEducator’s home in its formative years, to support the technology infrastructure of its websites, which were hosted by Athabasca University in Canada. Since 2010, the server has been hosted by the OERF itself. In addition, the OERF appointed a Senior Lead Software Engineer, thereby ensuring that open source software resource provision was in-house [1, 2]. WikiEducator’s flagship, the Learning4Content (L4C) project, builds capacity among global educators by teaching wiki technology to newcomers and experts in the field of open education. In exchange for the free training opportunity they receive, participants are asked to create open content on WikiEducator and contribute toward WikiEducator’s strategic objectives. The success of the L4C project helped WikiEducator reach its target number of equipping 2,500 educators with wiki skills to create open educational resources online two years ahead of the initially planned three years and was the reason for a large additional number of novices and experts alike joining the project. From 2010 to the present, many L4C and face-to-face workshops have taken place, some of which were formally registered, while others ran behind the scenes replicating the initial efforts. These workshops were carried out by WikiEducator’s pool of volunteer online and face-to-face facilitators at educational institutions around the world, open universities, and other global teaching environments to develop free content resources in support of national curricula. WikiEducator’s intention is to not to replace closed content; to the contrary, motivated content developers work both in closed and open curriculum projects to produce quality content that is equally important in both spheres. The year 2010 was also the year in which the Open Education Resource University (OERu) was founded. As its first official activity, the OERF hosted its first strategic international planning meeting for the



OERu project with the aim of implementing scalable systems of volunteer student support through community service learning approaches. It also aims to coordinate assessment and credentialing services on a cost-recovery basis for participating educational institutions to ensure credible qualifications and corresponding course articulation among anchor partners [3]. A community-driven community college called WikiEducator Open Learning Academy (WOLA) was established in 2012. The purpose of the community college is to assist with the formation of the OERu- ready global community of educators. The L4C project is one of its pillars, as is the newly developed Open Licensing Course 4 Educators (OCL4Ed), which has been offered four times since its inception, with massive numbers of enrollments, by the OERF in collaboration with Creative Commons, Athabasca University, and Otago Polytechnic University. By end of June 2013, WikiEducator’s active global educator online community grew to over 63,833 registered members contributing 20,433 articles, making over 934,878 edits to date, adding 34,799 files, and maintaining a pool of 32 volunteer administrators [9].

II. PHASE 1: ESTABLISHING FOUNDATIONS (MAY 2006–DECEMBER 2007)

A. The Four Cs: WikiEducator’s Four Building Blocks Inspired by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, WikiEducator was founded as a community project with the intent of operating under the parameters of the Free Culture Movement and of offering a free version of the education curriculum by 2015. The founding patron of WikiEducator was Sir John Daniel, the previous President and Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Learning (2004–2012), and its creator, was Dr. Wayne Mackintosh (2006–2009). The project adopted a community governance model, which is coordinated by WikiEducator's Open Community Council and is built on the work of an International Advisory Board. Volunteer WikiEducator Ambassadors [4] promoted the project around the globe, and WikiEducator’s new technology road map helped to drive its agenda forward. To date, WikiEducator's technical infrastructure has been continuously supported through a financial contribution by the COL to the OERF. WikiEducator's strategic objectives were built on—and continue to thrive on—achieving the four Cs, which are:

• A thriving community of practitioners and policy makers around the world committed to leveraging the potential of OERs, thereby facilitating the establishment of community networks and collaboration with existing free content initiatives in education.

• The capacity and skills to engage in the use of MediaWiki and supporting technologies and global best practices in peer collaboration models of OER development. For example, the L4C project provides free training in basic wiki skills to build capacity for OER development.

• Free content development that supports capacity building by adapting existing resources and repackaging them in formats that support reuse. An example would be the WikiEducator OER tutorials used for training in the L4C project.

• Ensuring smart connections, which refer to the technology requirements for a cost-effective OER initiative founded on open source technologies.

B. Establishing Foundations In the beginning phase (Phase 1), technologies were set up and processes were put in place to facilitate the development of free/open content by the educator community. This goal was achieved by

• building capacity among global educators by teaching them how to use wiki technology to create open education materials;



• planning educational projects linked with the development of free content on WikiEducator; • a process of self-organization, providing the community with the freedom to determine the kinds

of projects, structures, and communication mechanisms used on WikiEducator; • establishing a democratic governance model from the community for WikiEducator; • developing collaborative and democratic community policies that support and promote the values

of the WikiEducator community; and • networking strategic relationships to ensure the right connections for a sustainable community. One of

the milestones in this phase was the establishment of the Free/Libre Open Source Software 4 Education (FLOSS4Edu) project [5]. It was a grassroots project that originated and launched in Kenya in November 2006. Its primary purpose was to address the absence of free content in African schools and the lack of skills and knowledge of how to use FLOSS technologies. It was founded to improve access to FLOSS resources in consideration of high bandwidth and shortage of FLOSS distribution channels. In support of the planned launch of the Learning4Content Help Tutorials [6] to teach the use of wiki syntax for the purpose of developing open content on WikiEducator, Newbie Tutorials were developed and completed in February 2007. The community produced 22 book equivalents of free content on WikiEducator during 2007. WikiEducator achieved 1,000 users by May 2007 and 2,165 users by December 2007—more than doubling its number of users during that time. In October 2007, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation approved a USD 100,000 grant in support of the L4C project.

III. PHASE 2: SCALING UP FREE CONTENT DEVELOPMENT (JANUARY 2008–DECEMBER 2008)

A. Starting the Learning4Content (L4C) Project The L4C project constituted an integral component of Phase 2 of WikiEducator's strategic plan, namely to scale up the rate of OER content production. Learning4Content focused specifically on the outcome of building capacity in wiki skills for the international education community and became WikiEducator’s flagship. The L4C project aimed to provide free training for educators in return for one free lesson plan developed on WikiEducator for the benefit of others. Wiki syntax training established clear pathways for a wide variety of individuals to develop open content and contribute to WikiEducator projects. WikiEducator became a one-stop platform or portal that clearly identified the areas and fields where assistance and support were needed. It also differentiated and communicated the skill requirements for individual projects when it came to learning and content design, multimedia and visual design, linguistic design, and research and technical design. The L4C project was officially launched in January 2008, running its first pilot online-training workshop from January 28–February 8, 2008, under the lead facilitation of Dr. Wayne Mackintosh, the founder of WikiEducator. From then onward, with the generous financial support of WFHF, WikiEducator conducted one Learning4Content online training workshop per month for the duration of the project, with a pool of international facilitators groomed out of the Learning4Content initiative. Each workshop was initially held for ten days before a second set of compressed Learning4Content Help Tutorials were developed for intermediate- to advanced-level learners, reducing the time and effort required to complete the course to five days. Participation initially started out slowly but drew record numbers for WikiEducator very quickly, becoming a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The WikiEducator MOOCs did not require prerequisites, making the barrier to entry low. The L4C training workshops were headed by volunteer online facilitators (asynchronously) and supported by e-mail. Participants signed learning “contracts” to develop open materials on WikiEducator for the benefit of the global educator and learner community. At the end of each training workshop, facilitators certified participants based on demonstrated skills on their own user pages following the criteria of the WikiEducator WikiMaster program [7].



From its inception in January 2008 through June 30, 2010, the L4C activity hosted 51 online and 62 face- to-face workshops among 4,253 registered participants. Training workshops were held in 113 countries, of which some countries ran two workshops consecutively due to the great demand for this learning opportunity. The male-to-female ratio of participation was about 50:50 at the time but used to be in favor of male participation, whereas statistics drawn in November 2012 indicated that female participation was predominant: 46.7% were male versus 53.3% who were female [10]. Social media such as Facebook, a dedicated Google Group for instructional notices and all communications (with embedded links to WikiEducator), WIZIQ (a virtual boardroom) and WikiEducator’s Moodle site, as well as other integrated technologies, were used to promote each L4C workshop. The L4C training workshops often brought together very high numbers of participation through other social media sites, which were always integrated into WikiEducator, where the actual courses were conducted. Each L4C workshop had its own website specifically designed for the event. During the period from July 1, 2008–June 30, 2009, WikiEducator recorded 2,816,190 visitors to the WikiEducator website compared with 1,860,969 visitors the previous year, an increase of 51% in traffic to the site [9]. WikiEducator registered 5,751 new accounts during the 2009 financial year compared with 3,099 new accounts in 2008, an increase of 86%. Drawing on database statistics, it was calculated that WikiEducator has produced the equivalent of 88 study guides or textbooks through volunteer authoring during that time. The community produced 49 book equivalents during 2009 compared with 22 during 2007, representing an increase of 123%. This equated to 4.08 book equivalents per month for 2009, compared with 1.83 book equivalents per month in 2008 [8]. WikiEducator was named the inaugural recipient of the 2008 Merlot Africa Network and eLearning Africa (MANeLA) Award in the “Free Software for OER Content Authoring” category. An OER Handbook for Educators went to print in August 2008. It was designed to help educators find, use, develop, and share OER to enhance their effectiveness online and in the classroom [11]. In June 2008, because of the absence of a formally elected council and lack of an election policy, the first WikiEducator Council was elected. In September of 2008, the WikiEducator community had grown to 5,941 registered users, almost double the results of May 2008. Learning4Content was instrumental in driving WikiEducator forward. It reached its strategic plan two years ahead of schedule and has become the fastest-growing wiki on WikiEducator to date. The largest Learning4Content workshop ever held, with a record 421 participants, hosted under the motto “Giving Back the Gift of Knowledge,” took place in July 2010. It was conducted with 29 volunteer facilitators and participants from over 50 countries.

IV. PHASE 3: SUSTAINABLE IMPLEMENTATION (JANUARY 2009–ONGOING)

A. Sustainable Implementation of Free Content Development The success of the free content movement in education is measured when real students enroll in real programs using free content. The approach taken was from the “Build it and they will come” idea, which seemed to work best. One of WikiEducator’s initiatives in Phase 3, which focused on sustainable implementation, was the development of the Commonwealth Computer Navigator Certificate (CCNC). This certificate was created on WikiEducator to widen access to basic information and communication technology (ICT) skills, and training on topics such as data processing, spreadsheets, and the how-tos of Internet communication. The course consists of free content and teaches ICT skills using free software. New FLOSS4Edu chapters were established in West Africa, India, and Francophone Commonwealth countries as well as in the Pacific region during the years 2006–2009. During 2010, the OERF administered 24 workshops (13 online workshops, 3 face-to-face workshops, and 6 face-to-face workshops hosted by third-party institutions) registering 1,429 participants. During this time WikiEducator has increased the number of “qualified” facilitators who will carry on in the future and facilitate further Learning4Content workshops. Qualified facilitators are those who have built up their



knowledge base of wiki skills under the WikiEducator WikiMaster Program (http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiMaster) to the level of Wiki Artisan and have supported an experienced L4C facilitator in many L4C workshops before becoming a lead facilitator themselves.

B. WikiEducator Open Learning Academy (WOLA) WikiEducator to date remains the flagship activity of the OERF. In the summer of 2012, in an effort to continue building capacity and to provide a space for continued online facilitation, teaching, and mentoring opportunities, WikiEducator’s international educator community—through a consensus— voted for the establishment of a community-driven community college called WikiEducator Open Learning Academy (WOLA). The purpose of the community college is to assist with the formation of an OERu-ready global community of educators. A workgroup to propose a vision, mission, interim organizational structure, business procedure, and pilot initiatives for WOLA has been constituted, and a consensus has been reached on the way forward and next steps. One of WOLA’s building blocks is the continuation of the L4C training workshops as well as the OCL4Edu course.

C. Open Content Licensing for Educators Workshop (OCL4ED) UNESCO contracted the OERF to design and develop an online workshop for educators who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and Creative Commons licenses. Using Learning4Content, the course materials were developed as a collaborative project including volunteers from the OERF, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium, and Creative Commons. The Open Content Licensing for Educators course provides essential knowledge required by educators about how to legally remix open education materials and to help institutions to take informed decisions about open content licenses for their teaching and research materials. The Open Content Licensing for Educators workshops have been hosted on WikiEducator and have averaged 556 participants per workshop. With the completion of the last course, presented from December 3–14, 2012, the OCL4Ed initiative has now provided free learning opportunities to 2,242 global educators. OCL4Ed in December 2012 attracted 327 registrations from 60 different countries. The June 2012 course registered 516 participants, and the January 2012 course registered 1,067 participants. The pilot course registered 332 participants [12].

V. REACHING THE RURAL OR HARD-TO-REACH POPULATION

More than 1.2 billion people, or 30% of the world’s population, are poor [13]. Although many will never gain access to education, ICT-enabled development activities are using both traditional and modern technologies to provide access to required information and knowledge in rural communities. In response, WikiEducator developed a feature called “wiki-to-print,” which allows a user to select and combine free and open WikiEducator content into a book that can be printed and used offline. The feature enables those who do not always have connectivity to participate in this phenomenon by collating desired collections of OER for reproduction in a portable document format (PDF)

VI. ANALYTICS OF WIKIEDUCATOR AND ITS REACH

Analysis of the WikiEducator educator community using Survey Monkey [8] indicated that 27.2% of new WikiEducator members who have created an account on WikiEducator are coming from the African and Asia/Pacific region, followed by North American and European members who joined the initiative.

• 73.1% are educators (teachers, lecturers, or trainers). • 18.6% are researchers. • 18.4% are learners (students, scholars, or school pupils). • 47.7% of new members are mostly interested in tertiary (higher) education.

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiMaster)



• 70.5% have joined WikiEducator to learn wiki skills and develop free content materials (61.6%) and to connect with the WikiEducator community (55.7%).

• 67.2% are researching innovative educational trends and ideas. • 51.8% wish to grow personally. • 57.6% of new members were brought in through somebody they knew who already had a

WikiEducator account. • 42.4% did not know anyone in the community. • 67.9% of newbies visited the community, logging in less than five times before joining. • 6.7% needed to log in more than ten times before they joined the community.

The majority of newbie WikiEducators (64.5%) are beginners, 28.4% have intermediate wiki skills, and 7.0% have advanced wiki skills. South America makes up only 4.4% of new WikiEducator memberships. The picture that emerges shows that educators are often joining WikiEducator from the higher education sector and through the introduction of their peers and friends who already have WikiEducator accounts. They participate to research new trends and ideas, to grow personally, to connect with other educators around the globe, and to learn how to create open content. In 2012, the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement gained momentum during the first World OER Congress held in Paris, France, in June [14]. This event brought together Education Ministers from a variety of countries to agree on an OER strategy and way forward to make OER mainstream. The outcome of the OER World Congress led to the “Paris Declaration,” which contains recommendations to

1. foster awareness and use of OER; 2. facilitate enabling environments for use of information and communication technologies (ICT); 3. reinforce the development of strategies and policies on OER; 4. promote the understanding and use of open licensing frameworks; 5. support capacity building for the sustainable development of quality learning materials; 6. foster strategic alliances for OER; 7. encourage the development and adaptation of OER in a variety of languages and cultural

contexts; 8. encourage research on OER; 9. facilitate finding, retrieving, and sharing of OER; and 10. encourage the open licensing of educational materials produced with public funds.

Since the OER World Congress in Paris and the recommendations made for OER development, the OER movement has undergone a shift and has catapulted quite a few countries into action. Many new OER initiatives are emerging, and policy developments on the national and regional levels, and even on some institutional levels, are underway worldwide.

VII. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS A. Open Educational Resources University (OERu) Since 2010, the OER Foundation prepared for a new development that resulted in the hosting of its first open planning meeting on February 23, 2011, in Dunedin, New Zealand, for the “Open Educational Resources (OER) for Assessment and Credit for Students” project [17]. UNESCO provided support for live streaming the meeting on the Internet to enable virtual participation by education leaders and other interested parties. The OERF, Otago Polytechnic (New Zealand), the University of Southern Queensland (Australia), and Athabasca University (Canada) collaborated on this project, as founding anchor partners, to provide flexible pathways for OER learners to earn formal academic credit and pay reduced fees for assessment and credit.



The Open Educational Resource University (OERu) is described as a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions that aims to provide free learning opportunities to students worldwide using OER learning materials in an attempt to obtain credible qualifications from recognized education institutions. The OERu is deeply rooted in the community service and outreach mission to develop a parallel learning universe to add value to traditional delivery systems in postsecondary education. Through the community service mission of participating institutions, students will pay reduced fees for assessment and credit. [16] The OERu’s main focus is to offer courses and programs based solely on OER and open textbooks and to design and implement scalable pedagogies appropriate for the OER university concept. They will establish scalable systems of volunteer student support through community mission learning approaches and coordinate assessment and credentialing services on a cost-recovery basis for participating education institutions to ensure credible qualifications and corresponding course articulation among anchor partners. The OERu network aims to provide more affordable access to postsecondary education for the estimated 100 million learners in the world who are qualified for a seat in tertiary education today but, due to funding issues or lack of tertiary education provision, will not be able to gain credible qualifications. This tertiary education network proposes that OERu students will gain free access to high-quality courses that are designed for independent study using OER. OERu learners will receive student support through a global network of volunteers and peer support using social software technologies. Students can be assessed for a fee by participating institutions and earn a credible credential. The OERu’s founding anchor partners are:

1. The Athabasca University 2. The Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF) (nonteaching) 3. The Otago Polytechnic 4. The University of the Southern Queensland (USQ) 5. BC Campus, Canada (nonteaching) 6. Empire State College (State University of New York), United States 7. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University, India (Gujarat Open University) 8. Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, New Zealand 9. North Tech, New Zealand 10. South New Hampshire University, United States 11. Thompson Rivers University, Canada 12. University of Canterbury, New Zealand 13. University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa 14. University of Wollongong, Australia

Additional anchor institutions have joined the OERu since then. They are: 15. Excelsior College, United States 16. Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada 17. Open University of Catalonia, Spain 18. Thomas Edison State College, United States 19. Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand 20. University of Glamorgan, United Kingdom 21. University of the South Pacific, Fiji 22. Wintec, New Zealand



A number of important building blocks for the OERu are as follows: • OER assets: These involve the integration of existing international education resources into an

open pedagogy model, including open access content, open access journals, and open textbooks. • Existing expertise: This includes a wealth of transferable experiences from open and distance

learning to support the design and development of the OERu. • Financial resources: These include contributions in time from participating institutions and

funding support from external donors for strategic elements that will be required to address the gaps in available OERs and the design of new components of the OERu system.

• Participating institutions: The OERu aimed to achieve a critical mass of anchor partners who all agreed to the core principles of engagement for providing formal academic credit for OERu courses. Initially, the OERu aimed to recruit one educational institution from each of the global regions.

• ICT infrastructure: This consists of reliable and scalable open source software systems that exist for implementing the OERu collaboration.

The logic model of the OERu distinguishes three core categories to achieve the OER University project: • OERu network: This covers those activities where cross-institutional collaboration is more

effective than institution-based service provision. • Educational institution services: These refer to the fee-for-service initiatives that will be

provided by participating postsecondary institutions on a cost-recovery basis. • OER support infrastructure: This incorporates the cross-cutting infrastructure needed to

support a scalable network for the OER University project. During the foundation phase, the OERu aims to develop two credentials: one undergraduate and one postgraduate. Depending on available resources and contributions from participating institutions, more credentials may be developed. The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) turned the OERu vision of free learning opportunities with pathways to achieve formal academic credit into reality by announcing on October 3, 2012, the launch of its first open course, Regional Relations in Asia and the Pacific (AST1000). The course commenced on November 23, 2012, and completed in April 2013. OERu learners were able to enroll, and interested students were advised on how to obtain a formal assessment from USQ. The L4C training workshops and the OCL4Ed courses are examples of existing activities of the OERF that contribute to the achievement of the outputs of a particular initiative. Determining the first qualifications for the OERu is an example of an activity required for the Open Curriculum initiative. This logic model approach is designed to provide a framework for international collaboration where different institutions and individuals can take responsibility for leading the successful completion of the range of activities necessary for building the OERu. In December 2012, the Otago Polytechnic announced that their new Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education, recently approved by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, would be offered as a full credential for the OERu network based solely on OER using Creative Commons licenses. The course materials for the Graduate Diploma will be hosted on WikiEducator. This will create opportunities for formal certification pathways for a number of WikiEducator's free training initiatives, including OCL4Ed and Learning4Content, which will be integrated into an elective course in Open Education Practice. The OER Foundation, as a small educational charity, does not currently have the capacity or infrastructure to award certificates of participation or formally assessed certificates of proficiency for the OCL4Ed or Learning4Content workshops. However, this new development will create pathways for future WikiEducators participating in free professional development workshops who would like some form of certification.



The workshop materials, hosted on WikiEducator, will always be open access without any requirement to register an account for participation in these international workshops. In this way we can ensure free learning opportunities for educators who want to learn more about OER, copyright, and Creative Commons.

VIII. CONCLUSION

While open education is far from being mainstream at this point, it continues to grow, raise awareness, and build capacity for its cause: to make education freely available for all and to reduce the costs of educational textbooks. It motivated international governments to start making textbooks openly available not only to their own people, but also to others. This consequently opens up additional opportunities for informal students to obtain formal accreditation directly. Educational institutions are slowly starting to embrace this still relatively new phenomenon. They are often pursuing parallel teaching environments, face to face and online, in dedicated areas within established traditional education systems to cater to this need. With the current movement in the education system, the newly established OERu is attempting to add value to existing postsecondary institutions by developing and establishing open pathways for learners to use open educational learning materials available on the Internet and to earn credentials from reputable higher education institutions. The skills a learner has acquired online can then be formally assessed by an appropriate academic entity upon request and with very little money. The WikiEducator L4C project continues to play a major role for the OER Foundation by educating learners around the world about the use of wiki technology to develop open educational resources on WikiEducator, and thereby is a contributing project to build capacity in the OER world. The recently established WikiEducator Open Learning Academy has made the L4C project one of their community-driven and selected pillars in an effort to provide continuation and sustainability of this OER project. For many learners, the L4C project has been the initial step into the still new world of open education, thereby raising awareness while building capacity at the same time. Through the L4C project, institutions started realizing that working together is far better than going at it alone. The WikiEducator online community to a large extent has grown out of the L4C project and is proud to call 62,384 members its own as of March 20, 2013. Teachers, lecturers, or trainers working in the formal education sector make up 74% of the members of the community. Many OER champions have emerged out of the participating WikiEducator L4C educator community. These are individuals who have gained a stronger understanding of how they can use WikiEducator as a tool in their own learning environment to effect change in their own communities and/or in their educational institutions, whether as individuals or as part of clusters of an institution. The excitement and newly gained confidence of L4C participants soars after they acquire their new wiki skills and experiences. This newfound confidence leads to many positive effects, as participants feel empowered to seek new leadership roles both within and outside of the WikiEducator community. An example of the effect of this enthusiasm is the WikiEducator India chapter, and there are many others [15]. The L4C project has demonstrated a powerful and cost-effective model to scale up development capability on an international scale. While funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the L4C project is nearing 10,000 educators trained in the use of wiki technology. It is the world’s largest training project for building wiki skills for educators in the formal sector worldwide and will continue to flourish and thrive with many new activities for further growth underway.

IX. REFERENCES

1. Day, R. Chairman’s Overview. The Open Education Resource Foundation: Annual Report 2009. (2010). http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-Report_2009-Audited-version.pdf

2. Mackintosh, W. Open Education Resource Foundation: Annual Report 2010. http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-Report_2010--Final.pdf

http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-Report_2009-Audited-version.pdf

http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-Report_2010--Final.pdf



3. WikiEducator. OER for Assessment and Credit for Students: Meeting Summary - 23 February 2011. Last modified February 27, 2013. http://wikieducator.org/OER_for_Assessment_and_Credit_for_Students/Meeting_Summary_- _23_Feb_2011

4. WikiEducator. Last modified March 5, 2012. http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiAmbassador 5. WikiEducator. FLOSS4Edu. Last modified November 30, 2010.

http://wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu 6. WikiEducator. WikiEducator Tutorials. Last modified October 21, 2012.

http://www.wikieducator.org/Help:Contents 7. WikiEducator. WikiMaster Skills Development and Certification Framework. Last modified April

9, 2013. http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiMaster 8. Survey Monkey. WikiEducator Survey for New Accounts. November 16, 2012. 9. WikiEducator. WikiEducator Special Statistics. http://wikieducator.org/Special:Statistics 10. Mackintosh, W. Report on the Learning4Content Project for the William and Flora Hewlett

Foundation. (August 18, 2009). http://wikieducator.org/images/a/ac/L4C_Report_Aug09.pdf 11. Gurel, S. and Wiley, D. OER Handbook for Educators 1.0. Logan, UT: The Center for Open and

Sustainable Learning (2008). Last modified October 10, 2010. http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator_version_one

12. WikiEducator. OCL4Ed Statistics. Last modified December 17, 2012. http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/OCL4Ed_Statistics

13. The World Bank. State of the Poor. Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Paper. http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/State_of_the_poor_paper_April17.pd f

14. UNESCO. 2012 World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress: 2012 Paris OER Declaration. Retrieved June 22, 2012. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris OER Declaration_01.pdf

15. WikiEducator. India. Last modified June 3, 2013. http://wikieducator.org/India 16. WikiEducator. OER University. Last modified February 14, 2013.

http://www.wikieducator.org/OERu 17. Otago Polytechnic. Another World First for Otago Polytechnic: OP to Offer Full Credential for the

OERu. (December 12, 2012). Retrieved January 18, 2013. http://wikieducator.org/Another_world_first_for_Otago_Polytechnic:_OP_to_offer_full_credential_ for_the_OERu

X. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Athabasca University. OERu: Open Education Resource University: Towards a Logic Model and Plan for Action (March 28, 2011). http://wikieducator.org/images/c/c2/Report_OERU-Final-version.pdf Alexa The Web Information Company. Wikieducator.org. Retrieved November 16, 2012. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikieducator.org Taylor, J. and Mackintosh, W. OERu: Increasing Access to Postsecondary Education. Connections and EdTech News (June 2011). http://www.col.org/news/Connections/2011jun/Pages/Partners.aspx Downes, S. Experiences from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and How the MOOC Could Potentially Increase Diversity, Social Inclusion & Learner Engagement. Squire Morley (blog), January 8, 2013. Retrieved on January 15, 2013. http://squiremorley.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/experiences- from-massive-open-online-courses-moocs-and-how-the-mooc-could-potentially-increase-diversity- social-inclusion-learner-engagement/ Mackintosh, W. NZ National OER Symposium: Fair and Reasonable Practice Survey International Comparison. (November 5, 2012). Retrieved on December 9, 2012. http://www.slideshare.net/mackiwg/oer-fair-and-reasonable-practice-survey - btnNext

http://wikieducator.org/OER_for_Assessment_and_Credit_for_Students/Meeting_Summary_-

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiAmbassador

http://wikieducator.org/FLOSS4Edu

http://www.wikieducator.org/Help%3AContents

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiMaster

http://wikieducator.org/Special%3AStatistics

http://wikieducator.org/images/a/ac/L4C_Report_Aug09.pdf

http://www.wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator_version_one

http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/OCL4Ed_Statistics

http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/State_of_the_poor_paper_April17.pd

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris

http://wikieducator.org/India

http://www.wikieducator.org/OERu

http://wikieducator.org/Another_world_first_for_Otago_Polytechnic%3A_OP_to_offer_full_credential_

http://wikieducator.org/Another_world_first_for_Otago_Polytechnic%3A_OP_to_offer_full_credential_

http://wikieducator.org/images/c/c2/Report_OERU-Final-version.pdf

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikieducator.org

http://www.col.org/news/Connections/2011jun/Pages/Partners.aspx

http://www.col.org/news/Connections/2011jun/Pages/Partners.aspx

http://squiremorley.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/experiences-

http://www.slideshare.net/mackiwg/oer-fair-and-reasonable-practice-survey



Definition of Free Cultural Works. Definition. Last modified December 1, 2008. Retrieved January 9, 2012. http://freedomdefined.org/Definition Myatt, J.K. and Taylor, J.C. The OER university: Enabling universal access to education. eLearning Knowledge Sharing webinar, 15:26. (March 6, 2012). http://vimeo.com/37933801 OER Foundation Ltd., Otago Polytechnic. Open Education Resource Foundation Annual Report 2011. (2011). Retrieved December 17, 2012. http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-2011-Annual-Report- Final.pdf Open Education Resources University (OERu). Logic Model (2011). Retrieved January 9, 2013. http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Logic_model OER Tertiary Education Network (OERTen). Report on Open Education Resource University (OERu): Meeting of founding anchor partners (November 2011). Retrieved January 9, 2013. http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERu/OERu2011-11_Report-A.pdf Taylor, J. Open Courseware Futures: Creating a Parallel Universe. e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) 10(1) (2007). Retrieved on January 10, 2013. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e- jist/docs/vol10_no1/papers/full_papers/taylorj.htm Schlicht, P. and Mackintosh, W. WikiEducator: Creating Open Educational Resources for Use by Anyone. WIZIQ Live Presentation. http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/212368-WikiEducator-Creating- Open-Educational-Resources-for-use-by-anyone UNESCO. Towards an OER University: Free Learning for All Students Worldwide. UNESCO Press Release. (February 8, 2011). Retrieved on January 9, 2013. http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php- URL_ID=31227&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html University of Southern Queensland. Australia’s University of Southern Queensland Launches the First OERu Prototype. (October 3, 2012). Retrieved January 8, 2013. http://wikieducator.org/Australia%27s_University_of_Southern_Queensland_launches_the_first_OERu _prototype

XI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided generous funding support to the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in October 2007 to assist in building capacity in MediaWiki editing skills for at least 2,500 educators in 52 countries of the Commonwealth. COL supported the project by providing continued technical support and the staff costs for 1.5 persons. After WikiEducator had become its own entity under the Open Education Resources Foundation (OERF) in New Zealand in 2009, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation continued supporting WikiEducator's (WE) Learning4Content project with additional funding support to improve content interoperability between MediaWiki and Connexions. COL continued to provide technical support for the project. It should be acknowledged that without the funding support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Commonwealth of Learning, and the tireless efforts of the Open Education Resources Foundation and its founding and other partners; WE’s international pool of facilitators, volunteers, enthusiasts, and advocates; and the engagement of the WE educator community all around the world, the project would not have become the largest capacity-building project for wiki editing skills.

XII. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patricia Schlicht joined the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organization created by Commonwealth Heads of Government, to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources, and technology, and brought her international project management skills from a variety of national and international governments and nongovernment organizations to COL in 2000. Since her employment at COL, she has gained extensive knowledge in open and distance learning (ODL) and blended learning using social media and open education tools, to raise awareness and build capacity to create social change.

http://freedomdefined.org/Definition

http://vimeo.com/37933801

http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-2011-Annual-Report-

http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERF-2011-Annual-Report-

http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/Logic_model

http://oerfoundation.org/files/OERu/OERu2011-11_Report-A.pdf

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e-

http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/e-

http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/212368-WikiEducator-Creating-

http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/212368-WikiEducator-Creating-

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-

http://wikieducator.org/Australia%27s_University_of_Southern_Queensland_launches_the_first_OERu



99

When the Learning4Content initiative on WikiEducator (WE) was launched in January 2008, she started facilitating WE’s Learning4Content workshops while still at COL and grew quickly into the role of Learning4Content Coordinator and Community Builder on WikiEducator in an ongoing effort to build a sustainable global online community of educators and teachers around the world. She has a passion for learning and believes that education and access to education should be freely available. She is a skilled and experienced enthusiast at using integrated and open technologies, her broad international experiences, her knowledge, and a strong interest in innovation to promote open education and social change. Ms. Schlicht continues to support the world’s largest capacity building OER project—WikiEducator— since its migration from COL in 2009 to the Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF) under the auspices of the Otago Polytechnic’s International Centre for Open Education in her free time.


Using Multilingual Analytics to Explore the Usage of a Learning Portal in Developing Countries


101

Turning the Digital Divide into Digital Dividends Through Free Content and Open Networks: WikiEducator Leaming4Content (L4C) Initiative

USING MULTILINGUAL ANALYTICS TO EXPLORE THE USAGE OF A LEARNING PORTAL IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Vassilis Protonotarios1,2*, Giannis Stoitsis1,2, Kostas Kastrantas1, Salvador Sanchez-Alonso2

1Agro-Know Technologies, Attica, Greece 2University of Alcala, Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT Learning analytics is a domain that has been constantly evolving throughout recent years due to the acknowledgement of its importance by those using intelligent data, learner-produced data, and analysis models to discover information and social connections for predicting and advising people's learning [1]. Learning analytics may be applied in a variety of different cases, but their role in understanding the multilingual requirements of users of learning portals is of an outstanding significance. As the adaptation of existing portals in multilingual environments is a cost- and time-consuming aspect of the development of a portal, the outcomes of learning analytics may provide the requirements on which further multilingual services of a portal will be built, ensuring their efficiency. This paper aims to identify and interpret the behavior of users from developing countries in a multilingual learning portal using the log files of the portal by applying the methodology defined in a previous work by Stoitsis et al. [2] The paper also aims to identify the aspects that should be studied by future related works by focusing on specific regions and countries that exhibit special interest for further adaptation of the portal to additional multilingual environments.

KEY WORDS Learning analytics, multilinguality, learning portal, developing countries

I. INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, we have witnessed a significantly increased number of interactive learning environments, learning management systems (LMS), intelligent tutoring systems, e-portfolio systems, and personal learning environments (PLE) serving the various types of education. All of these education- related products produce enormous amounts of tracking data, which in most cases is stored automatically; however, its exploitation is not fully achieved [3]. Learning analytics may be considered the study of the data sets that provide information on the interaction between learners and educational software/tools and/or educational material available online. These data sets may be used for the improvement of the learning processes in the context of almost all forms of education, including formal education [4]. Learning analytics exhibit a special interest for researchers working in this area, as they may provide substantial information on the way that the educational tools and resources are used by the intended end users. The analysis of this data may provide helpful information on the strengths and weaknesses of the material studied, identify learning patterns, predict learning outcomes, suggest relevant resources, and detect error patterns or affects of learners [5]. Since a significant number of educational resources in various formats and types are constantly developed and made available by both individuals and educational organizations, learning analytics may provide an indicator of the use and quality of these resources [6]. Various initiatives like the U.S.-based Learning Registry (http://www.learningregistry.org) have identified the importance of learning analytics and have developed a methodology that allows the collection of the corresponding data and their publication for research and application purposes.



One of the most interesting aspects of learning analytics is the information it provides about language preferences and usage. Multilinguality is one of these aspects related to learning analytics that have received a lot of attention during recent years, as it enables users to find content in their native language and at the same time use an interface that is closer to their needs and knowledge. On top of that, it minimizes the barriers raised by linguistic issues, mostly affecting users who are not able to use tools and resources in languages other than their native ones. Multilinguality is taken into consideration by the developers of web portals and e-learning services providing access to learning resources, who are usually trying to make use of the existing automatic translation technologies in order to provide access to multilingual resources and tools. Due to its importance, multilinguality is currently actively supported on both national and international levels by initiatives like the MultilingualWeb project (http://www.multilingualweb.eu), which is funded by the European Commission. Despite the fact that in several cases the multilingual e-learning services cover a variety of different languages both at the software and the course/content level, it nonetheless seems that users from countries in dire need of these services, such as those in developing countries, may need additional support in this direction. In several cases, due to lack of funding, infrastructure, and knowledge, these countries do not develop their own e-learning material, so users from developing countries are usually depending on the e- learning material provided by other sources, such as those published online, as well as on open educational resources (OER), which are usually provided by such e-learning services. However, it is not possible for e-learning services to meet the linguistic needs of users from all different countries, covering all of the users’ possible languages and dialects. Among the various workarounds used for solving this issue, there is the use of a generic automatic translation service (such as Google Translate and Microsoft Bing Translator), which is integrated into the portal. Calling its API will translate the user interface and/or content into the language defined by the user; however, since these services are not domain specific, the results may be poor, thus degrading the quality of the offered e-learning services. In other cases, both the user interface and the educational material are manually translated, therefore exhibiting higher quality and added value to the services; however, this requires the investment of a significant amount of time and money, both of which appear to be scarce, especially in the last few years. An intermediate solution is the revision/enrichment by humans of the automatically provided translations, which significantly minimizes the effort required in achieving the multilingualism required by the users. In this direction, this paper aims to study how a learning portal serves users from developing countries and to identify their multilinguality requirements. Despite the fact that there are already publications detailing the processes for the evaluation of web portals (for example, see [7]), we decided to follow a different approach and base our analysis on the analytics of the portals. For this, we carried out an analysis of the log files of the Organic.Edunet web portal, a learning portal providing access to agricultural educational resources from a network of content providers, focusing on topics like organic agriculture, agroecology, and other green topics, such as sustainable development, energy, environment, and ecology. These log files were analyzed based on a methodology followed in other related studies [8] in order to help us identify the way that the portal is used by users from different contexts, coming from developing countries. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides background information on multilinguality aspects and definitions, as well as on the Organic.Edunet web portal. Section 3 provides information on the methodology used in this study, including the general context of the analysis, methods, and tools, as well as the variables studied. In Section 4, the results of the study are presented, and they are discussed within the context of this work in Section 5. Section 6 summarizes the conclusions of this work and points to the open issues that require further work.



II. BACKGROUND A. The Organic.Edunet Case Study This paper focuses on the Organic.Edunet web portal (www.organic-edunet.eu), a multilingual learning portal deployed in 2010, which provides access to almost 11,000 digital educational resources in the fields of organic agriculture, agroecology, and other green topics, such as ecology, sustainability, environment, etc. The content is aggregated from a number of networked repositories, which is constantly increased, and it is appropriate for most types of education (school, university, vocational, and adult). For the creation of the metadata records, the Organic.Edunet metadata application profile has been used [9, 10], which is a version of the IEEE LOM standard modified in order to meet the requirements for the annotation of agricultural educational resources. For the classification of the resources, the Organic.Edunet ontology is being used and supports the semantic search function of the portal based on the semantic services module [11]. Despite the fact that access to the portal is free to all visitors, there are already more than 5,500 registered users, who are enabled to rate, review, and bookmark resources available through the portal, providing additional value to the existing metadata records. In the reference period for this study (1/1/2010–12/20/2012), the portal has received more than 156,000 visits and 478,000 page views from more than 128,000 unique visitors from 195 different countries.

Visits

Page views

Unique visitors

Number of countries

Browser languages

156,376

478,313

128,230

195

114

Table 1: Organic.Edunet portal statistics from the log files (Reference period: 1/1/2010–12/20/2012)

In order to meet the multilinguality requirements of its users, Organic.Edunet has worked toward the deployment of multilingual services and the aggregation of content in several languages. As regards the multilinguality aspects of the portal, its user interface has already been manually translated into seventeen languages by persons affiliated with the Organic.Edunet network. The actual content, as well as the corresponding metadata records, is available in several languages, mainly English but also Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. However, since Organic.Edunet is an active network, new collections are constantly added, providing in several cases content in additional languages or enriching the content in existing ones.

Portal

language

Interface

Metadata

application profile

Metadata

Available resources

Language related

to countries studied?

English

√

√

10,883

8,522 Yes. South and West Africa, Asia

Greek √ √ 1,356 339 No

German √ √ 1,509 1,135 No

Spanish

√

√

599

99 Yes. Latin America

Estonian √ √ 1,241 311 No

French √ √ 174 3 Yes. North Africa

Turkish √ √ - 1 No

Arabic √ √ - - Yes. North Africa



Portal

language

Interface

Metadata

application profile

Metadata

Available resources

Language related

to countries studied?

Hungarian √ √ 2,204 293 No

Bulgarian √ √ - - No

Hindi √ √ - - Yes. India

Norwegian √ √ 1,082 41 No

Romanian √ √ 1,249 272 No

Russian √ √ 1,012 27 No

Slovenian √ √ 2 1 No

Chinese √ √ - - Yes. China

Italian √ √ 1 1 No

Table 2: Language and content statistics of the Organic.Edunet web portal, as of December 2012

The analysis of Table 2 shows that the portal is ready to support content in additional languages that are not currently represented in the pool of educational resources available through the portal, such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and other languages, for which the translations of both the user interface as well as the metadata AP and the ontology have already been provided. However, due to the fact that the localization of both the user interface and the content is a time-consuming and costly process, the real needs of the users have to be carefully identified and studied before the localization takes place [12]. This work aims to identify the behaviour of users from specific developing countries, which may contribute to understanding the multilinguality needs of these users.

B. Use of the Portal in Developing Countries According to the International Statistical Institute, “countries are divided into developed or developing according to their Gross National Income (GNI) per capita per year. Countries with a GNI of US$ 11,905 and less in 2010 are defined as developing” [13]. The United Nations Statistics Division provides an alternative, more abstract definition of developing countries:

There is no established convention for the designation of “developed” and “developing” countries or areas in the United Nations system. In common practice, Japan in Asia, Canada and the United States in northern America, Australia and New Zealand in Oceania and Europe are considered ‘developed’ regions or areas. In international trade statistics, the Southern African Customs Union is also treated as developed region and Israel as a developed country; countries emerging from the former Yugoslavia are treated as developing countries; and countries of Eastern Europe and the former USSR countries in Europe are not included under either developed or developing regions [14].

Last but not least, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides a more financial-related aspect to the definition of developing countries: “The main criteria used by the World Economic Outlook (WEO) to classify the world into advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies are (1) per capita income level, (2) export diversification and (3) degree of integration into the global financial system” [15].



Figure 1: Map of developing countries within the scope of IMF (dark green) and outside the scope of IMF (light green)

(Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country)

Our approach was to use the list of developing countries, as provided by the International Statistical Institute [13], and focus on the countries from which a minimum number of 100 unique visits were recorded in the reference period. These countries were then organized according to their geographic region in order to allow easier management of the analytics. The results of this filtering can be seen in Table 3.

Region

Country

Visits

Page views

Unique visitors

Browser languages

Latin America and the Caribbean

4,091

7,952

3,678

Mexico

785

1,293

735

es

Colombia

438

972

375

es

Argentina

375

924

340

es

Peru

319

550

282

es

Chile

306

576

271

es

Venezuela

164

271

155

es

Ecuador

141

258

131

es

Northern Africa

1,774

2,949

1,664

Tunisia

1,281

1,908

1,208

fr, en, ar

Egypt

272

504

251

en, ar

Morocco

104

240

95

fr

Southern Africa

418

796

385

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country)



South Africa

361

680

336

en

Eastern Africa

1,042

2,117

923

Ethiopia

256

512

236

en

Kenya

252

519

215

en

Tanzania

227

448

209

en

Western Africa

499

871

469

Nigeria

329

522

307

en

Ghana

107

196

102

en

Southern Asia

6,130

11,104

5,678

India

4,791

8,409

4,455

en

Iran

542

1,306

472

en

Pakistan

410

644

392

en

Sri Lanka

150

282

135

en

Bangladesh

109

217

101

en

Southeastern Asia

2,308

3,723

2,176

Philippines

776

1,160

738

en, fil

Malaysia

453

700

426

en

Indonesia

349

526

333

en, id

Thailand

289

558

272

en

Vietnam

210

401

193

en, vi

East Asia

1,567

2,817

1,400

China

648

1,143

573

zh-cn, en

Table 3: List of developing countries included in this study

The 17th Edition of the Ethnologue database (www.ethnologue.com), developed by Lewis et al. [16], provides information on languages spoken within each country and was used as a source of related information for the purposes of our analysis. Latin America and the Caribbean: Latin America and the Caribbean provided a significant number of visits to the Organic.Edunet web portal. The countries from this region that provided 100 visits or more were Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, and Ecuador. The language spoken in these countries is Spanish, which is one of the languages supported by Organic.Edunet both at the content and



at the user-interface levels. According to the logs of the portal, the users coming from these countries used a Spanish version of their web browser. Northern Africa: Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco are the three countries from North Africa represented in this survey. The results showed that users from Tunisia, where the official language is Tunisian Arabic, mainly used web browsers in Arabic and French, along with the more generic English version. In Egypt, where the official language is Egyptian Arabic, the Arabic version was used. Last, despite the fact that the official language of Morocco is Arabic, it was noticed that the users mostly used the French version of the web browsers in order to visit the portal. This may be explained by the fact that the French language is also widely used in Morocco between scientists and researchers. Southern Africa: Only South Africa provided more than 100 visits from the Southern Africa region. South Africa has eleven official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu; however, less than 2% of South Africans speak a first language other than an official one. In any case, the most widely used languages in South Africa are English and Afrikaans [17]. This explains the fact that the English user environment was used for accessing Organic.Edunet. Eastern Africa: Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania were the countries that provided more than 100 visits to the Organic.Edunet web portal. In all cases an English web browser was used for accessing the portal, probably due to the fact that there was no localized version of the browser in the languages spoken in these countries (Amharic and Swahili). Western Africa: The Organic.Edunet web portal received a relatively high number of visits from Nigeria and Ghana. In Nigeria there are more than 500 languages spoken, while in Ghana there are almost 80. In both countries the official language is English, which might explain the fact that the visits were made with an English browser. Southern Asia: As regards India, there are more than 100 languages spoken, while the official language is Hindi, and English is also widely spoken. In Iran the official language is Persian. In Pakistan the official languages are Urdu and English. Sri Lanka has two official languages, Sinhala and Tamil, while in Bangladesh the official language is Bengali. In all cases, the vast majority of the visits were made with an English browser. Southeastern Asia: The official languages of Philippines are Filipino and English. Malay is the official language in Malaysia, and a related one, Indonesian, is the official language of Indonesia, among the almost 700 languages spoken. Thai and Viet are the official languages of Thailand and Vietnam, respectively. Only in the case of Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam were there visits in the official languages of these countries, while in the rest of the cases, the English version of the web browser was used by the visitors of the portal. East Asia: China was identified as the only developing country from East Asia. The official language is Standard Chinese, and the visits received were made both in this language and in English.

III. METHODOLOGY A. Research Problem and Questions The aim of this work was to analyze the information related to the usage of the Organic.Edunet web portal by users from developing countries, in order to better understand the multilinguality use of the portal as well as possible issues that could be identified. Among the aspects studied are the language- related backgrounds of the users, the multilingual requirements of the users, and the way that the portal’s multilinguality features affect the behavior of the users. The reference period for this study is the one between the launch of the portal (1/1/2010) and near the end of the third year of the portal (12/20/2012), during which the status of the portal was established and a normal operation had been achieved for quite a long time. Therefore, the results of this analysis may be considered representative.



B. Variables Studied The analysis described in this paper was based on previous work by Stoitsis et al. [2]. The different types of variables that needed to be studied in order to export the necessary information from the log files in this specific paper, along with the corresponding descriptions, may be found in Table 4.

Variable

Description

Visits (per day) Visits per day for countries with full, partial (only interface), and no language support

Bounces (per day) Bounces per day for countries with full, partial, and no language support

Page views (per day) Page views per day for countries with full, partial, and no language support

Unique visitors (per day) Unique visitors per day for countries with full, partial, and no language support

Average time on site (per visit) Average time on site for users from countries with full, partial, and no language support

Average time on page (per visit)

Average time on page for users from countries with full, partial, and no language support

Page views (per visit) Number of pages per visit from countries with full, partial, and no language support

Visits from search engines Number of visits from search engines for each language

Search depth Average number of pages that users view after using portal search function for each language

Total unique searches Total number of unique searches using portal search function for each language

Number of key words used in portal search

Total number of key words used in portal search for each language

Table 4: A list of variables used in this study, as defined by Stoitsis et al. [2]

C. Methods and Tools In order for us to be able to provide insight on the multilinguality-related aspects posed in the initial hypotheses of this work, we first needed to identify the corresponding variables that could provide the feedback required. In this direction, the following approaches were considered in each case, based on the previous work by Stoitsis et al. [2]: 1. Language-related background of the users: In order to obtain information related to the language-

related background of the users, the following types of statistics were used: a) Descriptive statistics of the portal visits, such as total visits and page views b) Language and origin statistics: includes a number of indicators related to the location of the users,

such as the country from which the visits were made, information about the language of the browser used for accessing the portal, and the official language of the country from where the user accessed the portal

c) Combined statistics: refers to the combination of the two aforementioned types of statistics, which takes place when sufficient information is available

2. Multilingual requirements of the users: The following methods were used for accessing information about the multilingual requirements of the portal’s users:

a) Keywords used in generic search engines (e.g., Microsoft Bing, Google, and Yahoo!) for accessing the Organic.Edunet web portal



b) Keywords used in searches within the Organic.Edunet web portal using one of the available search functions

3. Effect of the portal’s multilinguality features on the behavior of the users: This type of analysis was the most complex one, as it required correlation between different types of information. An example would be to correlate the number of visits from a specific country and the possibility that the official language spoken in this country is supported or not by the Organic.Edunet web portal.

The information required for the aforementioned types of analysis was mostly retrieved from the Google Analytics service (http://www.google.com/analytics), which has been set up for the portal since its launch, and therefore provides an overview of the corresponding indicators. In some cases, the use of Microsoft Excel was necessary in order to work on statistical formulas and correlations between different indicators.

IV. RESULTS A. Language-Related Background of the Users As regards the language-related background of the users, the available information both for the country of the user as well as for the language of the browser used for accessing the portal was used. The analysis of the results is presented per geographic region, as defined in the previous chapters. Some of the indicators for the reference period may be found in Table 5. For this reference period, the portal received visits from 195 countries all over the world, which resulted in a relatively high diversity of the indicators.

Unique visitors/day

Bounces/day

Page views/day

Visits/day

World

118.29

85.10

441.25

144.26

Table 5: Basic indicators for the reference period

Table 6 provides an analysis of indicators related to portal-level statistics for the aforementioned regions in relation to the language of the browser used by the users when accessing the Organic.Edunet web portal.

Region

Browser language(s)

Unique

visitors/day

Bounces/day

Page

views/day

Visits/day


es

3.38

1.99

7.31

3.76

Northern Africa

en, fr, ar

1.53

1.27

2.71

1.63

Southern Africa

en

0.35

0.26

0.73

0.38

Eastern Africa

en

0.85

0.60

1.95

0.96

Western Africa

en

0.43

0.32

0.80

0.46

Southern Asia

en

5.22

3.90

10.21

5.63

Southeastern Asia

en, fil, id, vi

2.00

1.48

3.42

2.12

East Asia

cn

1.29

0.97

2.59

1.44

Table 6: Average values of portal-level statistics for the regions of the developing countries

http://www.google.com/analytics)



As regards the language of the browser used for accessing the portal, an interesting point is that in several cases the vast majority of the users preferred the English version of their browsers instead of a localized version, if available. This was the case especially for African countries and might imply that these users were also able to make use of the English user interface of the portal as well as English educational resources available through the portal. This is also indicated by the lower indicator levels related to their activity in the portal. The highest number of unique visitors per day that comes from the Southern Asia region is mainly influenced by the activity of the Indian users. In this region, the users used the English version of the browsers in order to visit the portal; therefore, we may also consider the possibility that they were not really affected by the fact that there was no content in Hindi, as they could probably use the available English resources. The level of the majority of the indicators that this specific region exhibited is more than double compared to the rest of the regions examined. In addition, increased values of the indicators compared to the rest of the regions analyzed in this work are provided by the Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. Despite the fact that the results may be affected by a variety of factors (such as the population of each country, the size of the community engaged in activities related to the context of Organic.Edunet, etc.), this may be partially explained by the fact that the portal supports Spanish both at the interface level and at the content/metadata level, facilitating the usage by Spanish-speaking users. The same seems to apply for the visits and page views per day, as this metric appears to be higher in regions where the visits were made with browsers either in the local language or their English versions where English is widely spoken, such as Southern Asia. In all cases, the specific metrics seem to be lower in the African countries, where there was neither user interface nor content in the native languages.

B. Multilingual Requirements of the Users After studying the linguistic backgrounds of the portal’s users, we moved to the next level, which was mainly based on how users used queries, both localized and in English, and how often they used localized terms against the widely used English ones. We considered that the most appropriate way to study the multilingual requirements of the users would be to examine the search queries performed by the users, both for reaching the Organic.Edunet web portal as well as for retrieving results within the portal using one of the portal’s search mechanisms. In both cases we focused on the languages identified in the previous paragraphs, based on the official languages spoken in the countries studied in this work and the languages of the browsers used by the users to access the portal. As regards the queries in generic search engines that led to the Organic.Edunet web portal, a list of the 500 most frequently used terms out of the 44,485 in total was extracted from the logs of the portal and the language of each term was identified using the Google Translate API (https://developers.google.com/translate). The next step included filtering the languages so that only the ones that might have been used by users from the participating countries were kept; this left us with only 99 terms in English and Spanish, as the majority of the queries performed within the portal were in European languages that did not belong to developing countries (such as German, Greek, Estonian, Hungarian, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian, and Turkish). The metrics used in this analysis include the language of the terms, the number of visits made to the portal using these terms in generic search engines, the total number of terms identified in this language, and the average number of pages viewed after using a query with these terms.

Term language Total number of visits Total number of terms Search depth English 10,185 93 3.30 Spanish 498 6 1.37

Table 7: Information on the queries performed in generic web engines before reaching the Organic.Edunet web portal



Table 7 shows that the English terms used for accessing the portal lead to a higher number of pages viewed per visit compared to the Spanish ones. However, due to the small sample size of the latter and the fact that English was used by users from developed countries, no safe outcomes could be extracted. The most widely used queries performed by users, which eventually led them to the Organic.Edunet web portal, are presented in Table 8.

Query term Term language Unique queries organic edunet English 2243

organic.edunet English 1386 edunet English 1126

pet bottle compactor English 461 budapest t2 English 431

organic edunet portal English 380 man and natural environment English 247

camelina sativa Latin 214 recursos secundarios Spanish 205

agbios English 200 how a corn plant develops English 149

www.organicedunet.eu English 113 organicedunet Spanish 103

portal organic edunet Spanish 95 educational scenario English 92

cicer arietinum Latin 82 natural and manmade environment English 82

Table 8: The most popular queries of users for reaching the Organic.Edunet web portal

Table 8 shows that the English terms are dominating the list of most popular queries made for accessing the portal. Apart from the few Spanish ones, there were also queries made using the scientific names of specific plants in Latin. As regards the queries used within the portal by the users for retrieving related resources, we followed a similar approach in order to record the corresponding indicators, filtering the first 500 terms out of a list of total 5,123 terms identified in the logs. This resulted in 108 terms used in languages that might have been used by users from the participating countries. The metrics used in this analysis include the language of the terms, the number of queries made using these terms within the Organic.Edunet web portal, the total number of terms identified in this language, and the average number of pages viewed after using a query with these terms. The results can be found in Table 9.

Term language Unique queries Total number of terms Search depth English 2,547 88 2.86 Spanish 426 19 6.21 French 9 1 3.67

Table 9: Information on the queries performed in the Organic.Edunet Web portal

As expected, the queries with English terms were the most popular, but at the same time they led to fewer pages viewed per visit. On the other hand, queries in Spanish and French were smaller in quantity but kept the users more engaged in the portal. In addition, it is once more obvious that no queries in Arabic, Chinese, or Hindi were identified in the 500 most popular ones, a fact which might be explained by the lack of content in these languages in the Organic.Edunet web portal.

http://www.organicedunet.eu/



The most popular queries within the Organic.Edunet web portal in the three languages identified are presented in Table 10. We will see that the terms used in this case are more specific to the context of Organic.Edunet and that the English versions dominate the list.

Query term Term language Unique queries School English 369

Scenario description English 265 School garden English 212

Handbook scenario implementation university level

English

192

Handbook scenario implementation school level

English

179

Climate change English 122 Organic garden (EA) English 82

Tomate Spanish 72 Organic English 67 Patata Spanish 64

Tomato English 51 Comparing organic farming

(BG/BRG Schwechat)

English

43

Control de plagas Spanish 42 Leche Spanish 41

Introduction to OA (USAMVB) English 39 Lechuga Spanish 39

Control plagas Spanish 37 Table 10: The most popular queries in the Organic.Edunet web portal

The fact that among the widely used English terms there are also six terms in Spanish indicates the high activity of the Spanish-speaking users within the portal. We may only assume that this would be the case in other instances as well, such as the French-speaking users, if there were French content available within the portal.

C. Effect of the Portal’s Multilinguality Features on the Behavior of the Users In this section, the analysis of the behavior of the users within the portal is described, based on the multilinguality features and aspects of the portal. In order to facilitate the analysis and be able to export meaningful results, we decided to limit the analysis of the indicators used to only two cases:

a) Countries with full language support, including countries that use languages in which both the user interface of the portal as well as the metadata and/or resources are available

b) Countries with only interface support, including countries that use languages in which the user interface of the portal is available but there are no resources or metadata records

A case study for the first category is the group of Latin American countries, while for the second one it is regions like Northern Africa and Eastern Asia. In order for us to identify the impact that the availability of multilingual services has on the use of the portal by users belonging to one of the two aforementioned categories, we used two types of indicators:

a) Portal level: The portal-level indicators include unique visitors per day, bounces per day, page views per day, and visits per day.

b) User level: The user-level indicators include average time on site, average time on page, and pages per visit.



The combination of the outcomes from these two kinds of indicators was also used by Stoitsis et al. [2] and has provided a set of interesting results. Based on this approach, we also investigated the relation between the activity of the users in the portal and the use of the multilinguality services. Table 11 provides portal-level statistics for the countries with language support. Countries that provided visits from visitors with browsers in English are included in this category. Wide variations can be identified between the different regions. However, we could assume that the higher number of visitors per day and page views per day in Latin American countries is due to the full support of their native language. On the other hand, despite the fact that in Southern Asia the vast majority of the visits took place with an English browser, English is not the official language of these countries, but still the number of both visits and visitors per day was higher than in the rest of the regions. The same might apply in the case of the African countries, where visits to the portal were made using an English browser as well; however, English is not the official language of these countries; therefore, no material in the native languages of the users could be retrieved.

Country/Territory Unique visitors/day

Bounces/day

Page views/day

Visits/day


3.38

1.99

7.31

3.76

Southern Africa 0.35 0.26 0.73 0.38 Eastern Africa 0.85 0.60 1.95 0.96 Western Africa 0.43 0.32 0.80 0.46 Southern Asia 5.22 3.90 10.21 5.63

Southeastern Asia 2.00 1.48 3.42 2.12 Average 2.03 1.43 4.07 2.22

Table 11: Average values of portal-level statistics for the countries with language support

Table 12 provides the corresponding information for Northern Africa and Eastern Asia, whose official languages are Arabic and Chinese, respectively, and which are only supported by Organic.Edunet at the user-interface level. The lack of content in Arabic and Chinese might be one of the reasons that led to lower activity in the portal compared to the previously described regions.

Country/Territory Unique visitors/day

Bounces/day

Page views/day

Visits/day

Northern Africa 1.53 1.27 2.71 1.63 Eastern Asia 0.53 0.40 1.05 0.60

Average 1.03 0.84 1.88 1.12 Table 12: Average values of portal-level statistics for the countries with interface support

In all cases the indicators exhibit significantly lower levels compared to the previous set of regions, and in most cases these levels are almost half of those of the previous set of regions. This outcome could also be considered as a factor explaining the lower levels of participation of users from these regions, as they would prefer to retrieve content in their own language. Moving to the user-level statistics for the countries with language support, Table 13 shows that users from Eastern and Western Africa tend to spend more time in the portal and visit a rather higher number of pages per visit despite the fact that there is no content in their languages. It should be noted that in both cases the English versions of the web browsers were used for accessing the portal, which might imply that these users were also capable of using the English content available through the portal.



Country/Territory Average time on site (sec)

Average time on page (sec)

Pages per visit


77

91

1.83

Southern Africa 97 107 1.90 Eastern Africa 117 113 2.03

Western Africa 110 148 1.75

Southern Asia 73 90 1.81 Southeastern Asia 66 107 1.61

Average 90 109 1.82 Table 13: Average values of user-level statistics for the countries with language support

Table 14 provides the corresponding information for the regions in which the official languages are Arabic and Chinese, respectively, languages in which there are no metadata or resources in the portal. Despite that fact, there are no significant differences between these regions and the ones belonging to the category of those whose languages are represented with metadata in the Organic.Edunet web portal. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the difference in the recorded values of the indicators studied for the two regions of this category are significant.

Country/Territory Average time on site (sec)

Average time on page (sec)

Pages per visit

North Africa 47 71 1.66

Eastern Asia 118 146 1.76 Average 83 109 1.71

Table 14: Average values of user-level statistics for the countries with interface support

V. DISCUSSION

The objective of this study was to identify the multilinguality aspects of the Organic.Edunet web portal that could potentially influence the behavior of its users, based on the analysis of the log files of the portal. The language-related background of the users provided additional information on this aspect and allowed for more objective results. In the vast majority of the cases, the English version of the web browser was used for accessing the portal. This fact raised barriers to identifying the behavior of the users who only used their native language, because those users would be prohibited from accessing and using a web portal that was not translated into their language and that did not provide educational material, or at least metadata, in the their language. In the case of tutors, researchers, and other educated users of the portal, it is a common practice to use the English version of the portal rather than the one in the native language of the user, in order to ensure that the actual information is used and to avoid any omissions and/or errors that may occur in the translation of the information. The results of our analysis showed that English was the dominant language used by the users, both for accessing the portal by searching in generic web search engines and for searching content within the portal. This was expected due to the universal acceptance of the English language. This massive use of English terms did not allow less frequently used terms in other languages to be studied and discussed in the context of this work. In addition, our research also showed that in several cases, users used the English version of their web browsers for accessing the portal instead of a localized version in their native language, which also explains why the English language was widely used in our study. The identification of the queries performed both outside and inside the portal also revealed that the majority of the terms were in several European languages that were not studied in the context of this work. However, this rendered the identification of potential queries made in one of the languages studied, such as Arabic, Hindi, and Chinese, a difficult task, as these queries were probably at the lower pages of the search results. In the cases mentioned in this study, it was interesting for one to see that the queries that were



performed in languages other than English (namely Spanish and French) led to more page views per visit, which is also an indicator that users get more engaged in the portal when they are able to identify content in their native language. Portal-level statistics indicated that the activity of the users in the regions where countries had language support was significantly higher—more than double the numbers in almost all other cases. This could be an indicator connecting the multilingual services of the portal with the native language of the users. However, the user-level statistics did not provide a similarly clear difference between the two types of regions, as the differences noticed could not be considered as significant. In cases such as India, Arabic- speaking countries, and China, the possibility of increased activity in the portal if there was localized material in the corresponding languages could be considered based on the outcomes of this study but could not be confirmed due to lack of required details in each case.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

The work presented in this paper describes a part of the multilinguality aspects of a learning portal devoted to organic agriculture and agroecology and tries to interpret the behavior of its users from the view of the use of these aspects. It has already been discussed that the availability of non-English documents on the web is rapidly growing, and users need to find a way to access them using an interface localized in their native language [18]. We tried to organize the aspects in a way that would make sense both for the optimal identification of the context of the study as well as for the explanation of the results. However, we should note that this work was challenging due to the wealth of information that needed to be addressed. For this reason, and because the information related to each country individually was difficult to allow its management at a country level in a single publication, it was decided that the corresponding regions should be used instead, facilitating the grouping of related information. However, we acknowledge that this could potentially lead to loss of details in the way that the results are presented. As a next step, we aim to focus on specific regions of interest, based on the outcomes of this study. Some of the regions that could be more thoroughly examined could be Northern and Eastern Asia, Northern Africa, and Latin America. These regions include countries with widely spoken languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi, and therefore exhibit a high interest for a multilingual portal. Future studies could focus on the countries included in the aforementioned regions and identify differences that may exist in the behavior of users originating from these countries. The outcomes of these future studies could be used for identifying the cases where the effort and cost of providing a localized version of the portal would be justified by the increased use. There are publications that confirm that there is a globally increased demand for education, while at the same time there is a growing gap between the demand and the availability of educational sources [19]. This demand is not constant but varies between different countries and types of education [20]. This gap may be also due to multilinguality issues identified in the learning portals, an issue that has to be investigated more thoroughly in upcoming related studies.


The work presented in this paper has been funded with support by the European Commission and, more specifically, the project CIP-ICT-PSP-270999 “Organic.Lingua: Demonstrating the Potential of a Multilingual Web Portal for Sustainable Agricultural & Environmental Education” of the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP).

VIII. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Vassilis Protonotarios holds a diploma in Agricultural Sciences from the Agricultural University of Athens (2001) and an MSc (2003) and PhD (2008) in Agricultural Biotechnology from the same university. He has professional experience in organic agriculture as an ex-officer of the Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food, Directorate of Organic Agriculture. He has been working with educational



metadata, digital collections/repositories, and learning portals since 2009. He is a scientific associate of Agro-Know Technologies, the Greek Research and Technology Network, and recently the University of Alcala (Spain). Giannis Stoitsis received a Diploma of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2002, and MSc and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Patras in 2004 and 2007, respectively. In the context of this study, Giannis took a place as a member of (and was funded by) the Information Engineering Unit of the University of Alcala. He has been previously affiliated with the Biomedical Simulations and Imaging (BIOSIM) Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. His research interests include data repositories, Semantic Web technologies, and biomedical image processing. Kostas Kastrantas holds a diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (2002). He also holds an MSc in eLearning from the University of Piraeus, Greece (2007). He has strong experience in developing web-based applications, and his main interests focus on online ontology-based and metadata applications. He has a long working record in research and academic settings with teams specializing in learning technologies. Salvador Sanchez-Alonso holds a PhD in Computer Science (2005) and a degree in Information and Library Science from the University of Alcala (2010). He is an expert in learning object metadata and the application of information and semantic technologies to education. Since 2005, he has been part of the Computer Science Dept. of UAH and a member of the Information Engineering Research Unit. He is involved in the coordination of the CIP PSP Organic.Lingua and LdV Organic.Mednet projects.

IX. REFERENCES

1. Siemens, G. What Are Learning Analytics? Elearnspace, August 25, 2010. http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/08/25/what-are-learning-analytics/

2. Stoitsis, G., Manouselis, N., and Sanchez-Alonso, S. Data Set Requirements for Multilingual Learning Analytics. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL) 4(1/2): 47– 66 (2012). ISSN: 1753-5255.

3. Greller, W. and Drachsler, H. Translating Learning Into Numbers: A Generic Framework for Learning Analytics. Journal of Educational Technology & Society 15(3): 42–57. http://ifets.info/issues.php?id=56

4. Siemens, G. and Baker, R. Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining: Towards Communication and Collaboration. In LAK '12 Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge, ACM: New York, NY, 252–254, 2012. ISBN: 978-1- 4503-1111-3

5. Verbert, K., Manouselis, N., Drachsler, H., and Duval, E. Dataset-Driven Research to Support Learning and Knowledge Analytics. Journal of Educational Technology & Society 15(3): 133– 148 (2012). http://ifets.info/issues.php?id=56

6. Ferguson, R. and Buckingham Shum, S. Learning Analytics to Identify Exploratory Dialogue Within Synchronous Text Chat. In LAK 2011: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, ACM: New York, NY, 99–103, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-4503-0944-8.

7. Sampson, D. and Manouselis, N. A Flexible Evaluation Framework for Web Portals Based on Multi-Criteria Analysis. In A. Tatnall, ed. Web Portals: The New Gateways to Internet Information and Services, 185–211. Idea Group Inc.: Hershey, PA, 185–211, 2005.

8. Palavitsinis, N., Protonotarios, V., and Manouselis, N. Applying Analytics for a Learning Portal: The Organic.Edunet Case Study. In LAK 2011: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, ACM: New York, NY, 99–103, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-4503-0944-8

http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/08/25/what-are-learning-analytics/

http://ifets.info/issues.php?id=56

http://ifets.info/issues.php?id=56



9. Palavitsinis, N., Ebner, H., Sanchez-Alonso, S., and Manouselis, N. Using e-Learning Technologies and Standards to Make Educational Content Available: The Organic.Edunet Approach. Journal of Information Technology in Agriculture 4(1) (2011).

10. Palavitsinis, N., Manouselis, N., and Sanchez-Alonso, S. Evaluation of a Metadata Application Profile for Learning Resources on Organic Agriculture. Metadata and Semantic Research - Communications in Computer and Information Science 46: 270–281 (2009). DOI: 10.1007/978- 3-642-04590-5_26

11. Manouselis, N., Kastrantas, K., Sanchez-Alonso, S., Cáceres, J., Ebner, H., and Palmer, M. Architecture of the Organic.edunet Web Portal. International Journal of Web Portals (IJWP) 1(1): 71–91 (2009). http://kmr.nada.kth.se/papers/Misc/IJWP_OrganicEdunet_final.pdf

12. Gazzola, M. and Grin, F. Assessing Efficiency and Fairness in Multilingual Communication: Towards a General Analytical Framework. AILA Review, 20: 87-105 (2007). ISSN: 1570-5595

13. International Statistical Institute. Developing Countries (2012). http://www.isi- web.org/component/content/article/5-root/root/577-developing2012

14. United Nations Statistics Division. Composition of Macro Geographical (Continental) Regions, Geographical Sub-Regions, and Selected Economic and Other Groupings, as revised on 10/17/2008. Retrieved 01/15/2013 from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

15. International Monetary Fund. World Economic Outlook (WEO) – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (2013). http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/faq.htm#q4b

16. Lewis, P., Simons, G., and Fennig, C., eds. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Seventeenth Edition. SIL International: Dallas, Texas, 2013. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

17. Pretoria Statistics South Africa. Census 2011: Census in Brief. 23–25, 2012. ISBN: 978-0- 6214-1388-5

18. Zhou Y., Qin, J., Chen H., and Nunamaker, J.F. Multilingual Web Retrieval: An Experiment on a Multilingual Business Intelligence Portal. In Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '05), January 3–6, 2005.

19. Geith, C., Vignare, K., Bourquin, L., and Thiagarajan, D. Designing Corporate Training in Developing Economies Using Open Educational Resources. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 14(3): 3–12 (2010).

20. Geith, C. and Vignare, K. Access to Education With Online Learning and Open Educational Resources: Can They Close the Gap? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 12(1): 105– 126 (February 2008).

21. Geith, C., Vignare, K., Bourquin, L., and Thiagarajan, D. Designing Corporate Training in Developing Economies Using Open Educational Resources. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 14(3): 3–12 (2010).

http://kmr.nada.kth.se/papers/Misc/IJWP_OrganicEdunet_final.pdf

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/faq.htm#q4b

http://www.ethnologue.com/




An Open and Scalable Learning Infrastructure for Food Safety

AN OPEN AND SCALABLE LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURE FOR FOOD SAFETY

Nikos Manouselis, PhD Charalampos Thanopoulos, PhD Agro-Know Technologies

Karen Vignare, PhD University of Maryland University College

Christine Geith, PhD Michigan State University

ABSTRACT In the last several years, a variety of approaches and tools have been developed for giving access to open educational resources (OER) related to food safety, security, and food standards, as well to various targeted audiences (e.g., farmers, agronomists). The aim of this paper is to present a technology infrastructure currently in demonstration mode at Michigan State University that will collect various agricultural education content (training descriptions, open educational content, competencies, and standards) and provide them through various interfaces, based on the needs of the targeted audience. The overall architecture of the infrastructure for the food safety sector and the needed components are presented, as well as the main usage scenarios that explain how the infrastructure can enhance existing platforms and services in the area of food safety and food security.

KEY WORDS Food safety, competencies, metadata, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), open educational resources (OER), open content, OpenCourseWare (OCW), online learning, agriculture, discoverability, search, information communications technology, Food Safety Knowledge Network (FSKN)

I. INTRODUCTION

Advances in information technology have increased the amount of information available in food safety. Michigan State University is demonstrating that information providers must go beyond providing information by employing a technology infrastructure that builds from multiple sources. Most service providers and data and knowledge organizations have done little to remove restrictions imposed on users regarding the type, scope/breadth, and depth of knowledge that is available to them. A variety of approaches, such as global search engines, have been developed to provide access to content and to filter content by content domain for all domains and target groups. Examples include the GLOBE initiative, which provides a generic, Google-style search engine for educational content [1], courseware-oriented networks like OpenCourseWare (OCW) [2], and OER-focused aggregators such as OER Commons [3], but also domain-specific networks such as Organic.Edunet for organic agriculture education [4]. However, a significant variety of content is still missing, as it is inaccessible or unknown to the potential target groups. The main cause appears to be the lack of clear policies and little or no awareness about how to openly share learning opportunities and content, as well as a lack of thematic networks that would



allow people to search and discover the right content for their information needs. Although a large number of such learning portals have been deployed, there are not many that are specifically designed for agricultural education [5, 6]. However, technology infrastructure is now being put in place to facilitate the development of such portals, based on the principle of metadata aggregation from various distributed sources [7]. Our overall aim is to put in place a technology infrastructure that will collect and provide a rich content base through numerous interfaces and modalities for various agricultural education contexts and scenarios. Efforts toward the coordination of this work have taken place in the context of the Agricultural Learning Repository Task Force (AgLR-TF) [8] and have led to the development of data pools such as the Green Learning Network of agINFRA [9]. Overcoming the technology challenges becomes more critical when the content is of extreme priority and importance on a global scale. The topic of food safety belongs in this category. Food safety focuses on the way food should be handled, prepared, and stored to prevent foodborne illness. A number of recent initiatives have been launched focusing on this topic, such as the FoodSafety.gov gateway in the United States, the food safety program of the World Health Organization (WHO) [10], and the Food to Fork action line of the European Union [11]. In a similar way, large industrial players have teamed up to align their efforts on global food safety standards and benchmarking [12]. There is also a wealth of institutions and projects that offer access to good educational resources related to food safety and food standards, ranging from training opportunities and courses to open educational resources, and from targeted/needed skills and competencies to certification opportunities and courses. Still, these resources cannot be easily discovered by those who need them, especially on a global scale. As in other areas of agricultural education, there is a need to pool together the variety of resources on food safety and standards in a baseline infrastructure that will enhance their discoverability. This paper introduces an approach that can help address this challenge that is currently being demonstrated through the Michigan State University Food Safety Knowledge Network (FSKN): taking advantage of current advances in e-learning technologies and standards in order to set up a learning infrastructure for food safety that will be open and scalable. To this end, the paper describes the overall architecture and components of such an infrastructure, and then describes a number of usage scenarios that demonstrate how it may enhance existing platforms and services.

II. BACKGROUND A. E-Learning and Agricultural Education Agricultural education is defined as the teaching of agriculture, natural resources, and land management through hands-on experience and guidance [13]. It focuses on educational practices and methods that will help prepare students for entry-level as well as advanced agricultural jobs. Agricultural education has a strong connection to the concept of agricultural extension [14] that was established in more highly developed countries to help rural populations evolve beyond the level of maintaining subsistence agriculture with limited industry. The extension officer, working for a variety of rural services and institutions on an agricultural extension service, serves as the educator and mentor of the farmers and rural businesses. Still, under the umbrella of agricultural education, one may find programs taught also at the elementary, middle school, secondary, postsecondary, and adult levels [15]. Agriculture is introduced in schools to teach subjects such as how plants and animals grow and how soil is farmed and conserved. Professional (or vocational) agriculture is introduced to prepare people to work in jobs in areas such as production, marketing, and conservation of agricultural products. Academic (college or university) agriculture focuses on training people to teach, conduct research, or provide information to advance the field of agricultural sciences. Finally, general education agriculture informs the public about various topics related to agricultural sciences and products, such as food safety. The introduction of e-learning technology (or technology-enhanced learning) to support agricultural



education is still in the early stages of adoption compared to other application domains. As Leary and Berge [16] have identified, early pioneers, such as American and Australian agribusinesses and colleges of agriculture, utilized e-learning methods as a major part of their education and strategic management programs. Still a number of challenges exist concerning the faculty and trainers, students and farmers, technology, finances, and other complications. Nevertheless, agricultural education institutions are eager to overcome such challenges and have started developing e-learning materials to supplement existing printed course materials or substituting parts of their programs with online components [17]. Distance agricultural education is most commonly designed to support professionals who are interested for their personal and career development or who are asked to acquire specific skills. In those cases, trainees work in an interactive environment with other trainees, following a flexible and adaptable online course [18]. Distance learning also supports rural people (e.g., farmers) in remote areas who are not well informed on the up-to-date techniques and practices in agriculture by providing training lessons in various agricultural topics. Learners have the chance to be trained at their own place and time [19]. In India, several universities provide basic educational opportunities for students at a distance, and additionally they focus on the production of a model for the training of mid-level skilled farmers and rural youth [20]. The survey “Developing Distance Learning Framework for Promoting Agriculture Education among Farmers in Uttarakhand” revealed that the majority of trained farmers (around 86%) accepted the importance of the distance learning for the enhancement of their skills and knowledge about already existing infrastructure in agriculture [20]. In Africa, several distance education in agriculture training programs have been developed in the last several years for youth in order to enhance the sustainable improvement of food security and to protect natural resources and the environment. For example, the Directorate of Distance Education (DDE) at the University of Zambia offers distance training to the farmers of southern Africa, with the Commonwealth of Learning [21]. Also, several training centers provide distance-learning opportunities to various targeted audiences in a wide range of agricultural topics, from basic cultivation techniques to building business plans. For example, the Academy for Distance Learning, from the United Kingdom [22], delivers distance training at an advanced level, such as the “Advanced Diploma in Plant Science” for completing approximately 800 learning hours, as well as online training covering basic knowledge, such as “Animal Breeding,” which has a duration of 100 learning hours. In the United States, land-grant universities have agriculture extension services and also participate in the online eXtention initiative. As an example, MSUglobal at Michigan State University leads initiatives providing online training in agriculture topics, food safety and security, and environmental protection. Such projects include My Horse University [23], AgShare [24] and the Food Safety Knowledge Network [25] for the development of open-access learning material for the food industry. In addition to distance and online learning, there is also a growing number of learning resources and OER, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The Global Food Protection Institute (GFPI) [27] is a nonprofit organization that focuses on the improvement of public health and the economic factors associated with foodborne illnesses. Studying the existing training courses for the food safety sector, the GFPI research team identified the following challenges: (a) lack of standardization, (b) non-competency-driven content, and (c) lack of consistency and peer review focusing on the variety of private and public food-safety standards that should be used in the development of food-safety courses. Their conclusions illustrate the need for better alignment and improved discoverability of food safety training and resources.

III. AN OPEN AND SCALABLE LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURE

At Michigan State University, we are demonstrating an open and scalable learning infrastructure for food safety. We are designing, developing, and deploying a technology platform that will be periodically ingesting data about food safety educational resources, both from MSU FSKN repositories as well as from external sources. This technology platform is based on the principle of metadata aggregation rather than local storage of the digital resources themselves: that is, it will provide the necessary mechanisms (in



terms of automated software tools) and user interfaces (in terms of functionalities and features) that will support the identification, indexing, curation, enhancement, and publication of metadata descriptions for the various information types of relevance to food safety educational stakeholders. This platform includes the following:

• Mechanisms in which educational offerings (such as online, blended, or physical courses on food safety topics) will be published and advertised.

• Mechanisms in which OER on food safety topics (such as lecture recordings, slides, notes, lesson plans, and good-practice guides) will be shared and discovered.

• Tools and interfaces to catalogue, view, and navigate food safety related skills and competencies. • Tools to map food standards in interoperable and machine-readable representations, facilitating

their alignment. • Multiple access points and interfaces to the information using various devices.

The overall architecture of the infrastructure is presented in Figure 1. The paragraphs that follow discuss in more detail how each layer functions.

Figure 1: Overall architecture of learning infrastructure

A. Educational Offerings Aggregation Back-End The core layer of the demonstration infrastructure is the back-end layer that is responsible for aggregating food safety educational resources (referred to as the Educational Offerings Aggregation Back-End). It includes the technology components that handle the periodic collection of descriptions of food safety resources, and more specifically the aggregation modules that deal with each different type of data. The backend must collect metadata descriptions for several types of content:

• Food safety courses, including both FSKN and external collections and providers. Examples of FSKN providers include MSU colleges and educational programs such as the MSU online courses offered through the MSU Learning Management Platform, ANGEL [28]; external providers could be universities participating through the OpenCourseWare Consortium [2] or those offering a MOOC through a platform like Coursera [29] or Udacity [30].

• Digital educational resources in other forms, such as lecture slides, training guides, project descriptions, case studies, multimedia material (videos, photos, audio), etc. This type of material can come from both FSKN and external providers. Examples of FSKN resources include



materials such as presentation slides in various formats and languages, transcripts of presentations, and audio and video versions of lectures, all of which were developed on various aspects of food safety topics, such as cleaning and disinfection [31]. Examples of other providers are educational portals and aggregators that have educational material on agricultural and food topics, such as OER Commons Green [32] and Organic.Edunet [4].

• Job profiles in the food industry, specifically in relation to food security and safety. These job profiles need to be elaborated to the level of required skills and competencies. This refers to, for example, competencies required by the individuals who are responsible for managing food safety in a company. The competencies need to be expressed following a standardized process (essentially a job task analysis) that will describe for each job profile the specific knowledge and skills required for the individuals in a company who manage food safety on a daily basis. FSKN used as the initial basis the company characteristics framework of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) [12], but additional competency representation schemes may be aggregated.

In order for these incoming sources of heterogeneous metadata to be ingested and aligned with each other, this infrastructure layer will also include mechanisms that external providers may use to declare the metadata properties that they are using and those properties’ value spaces (e.g., controlled vocabularies, thesauri, ontologies) as well as to link or map them to the ones internally used in the infrastructure. For example, a subject classification used internally to tag food safety courses in a training provider’s system can be mapped to the one used in the learning infrastructure (as well as generic ones widely used such as AGROVOC) in order to create automatic crosswalks from one to the other. The incoming data streams will be curated and validated though a number of administration panels that will be working over the infrastructure’s back end. They will allow both domain experts and technology experts to monitor, review, edit, and approve the flow of information and the way it is being exposed to the front-end layer applications.

B. Registry and Alignment Layer for Food Standards and Reference Curriculum

An additional proposed layer is one responsible for the standards registry and alignment. This is a layer that may efficiently facilitate the alignment of various food standards (currently taking place at a conceptual and not machine-reproducible way at the GFSI site), as well as allow food safety training providers to carry out a similar alignment of their training curricula using a reference curriculum that may be developed by GFSI stakeholders. This layer will achieve two aims:

a) It will replicate the existing food schemes benchmarking process that is taking place at GFSI, allowing food standard/scheme owners to describe and submit online their benchmarking application for crosswalking and recognition against the processes and dimensions of the GFSI Guidance Document. This process, which is currently taking place using paper applications, can be fully moved online by using digital representations of the food standards and their components. Graphical mapping tools and applications may then help scheme owners describe their standards and map them to the corresponding GFSI dimensions they connect them with.

b) It will carry out a similar alignment process for food safety curricula, allowing education providers that offer some training opportunity (online, blended, or face-to-face) to link their curricula to a reference curriculum that will be used within the infrastructure and that will also express learning outcomes in terms of food safety skills and competencies. The graphical mapping tools will help providers describe their curriculum and link it to the reference one.

This proposed layer can greatly facilitate the operation of technology services and tools across the learning infrastructure, since it will make it possible to:

• Represent any food safety curriculum (and especially the reference one) in an interoperable format using learning outcomes, skills, and competencies.



• Facilitate the generation of multilingual versions of a food safety curriculum, in order to be used or linked to the systems of providers in any country or geographical region.

• Support the generation of transformable curricula representations that will allow users of front- end applications and services to navigate and browse through curriculum areas using their preferred curriculum format.

C. Front-End Services and Applications The front-end layer of the demonstration infrastructure includes deployed services that illustrate its potential but also provides open mechanisms through which additional services may be developed. It is designed as a layer that will expose all the information aggregated by the back-end in different ways and using different formats so that a variety of third-party applications (ranging from web portals and sites to mobile applications and widgets) may be connected. The main way to access all of the information aggregated in the infrastructure is through a web portal. This portal is currently an enhanced version of the existing FSKN website, which allows users to discover food safety resources of various types. The web portal is also expected to support and demonstrate various interaction modalities (visual, device, thematic, geographical, industry sector, etc.) in the way that users search for and discover the information. In the future, the portal could also offer multilingual interfaces and metadata, facilitated by automatic translation engines.

D. Demonstration Projects To make the FSKN demonstration project as realistic as possible, we have used the existing agricultural learning infrastructure of the Green Learning Network (GLN) [33] that is federating, aggregating, and indexing educational collections on all areas of agriculture and biodiversity. For the FSKN demonstration described below, the following tasks were completed:

• Creation of a sample population of a learning repository with food safety resources: This task concerns the population of a new learning repository with a sample of high-quality metadata descriptions of food safety relevant courses, OERs, job profiles, and competencies. We worked together in order to index resources from FSKN as well as other relevant sources (such as Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, WHO, and Codex Alimentarius). The populated repository was connected to the GLN metadata aggregation infrastructure, and its resources have been harvested and exposed through appropriate APIs.

• Development of operational search page demonstration: This task concerns the deployment of a number of search and discovery web page prototypes that demonstrated how lightweight but efficient interfaces and mechanisms can be developed on top of such a learning infrastructure. The deployed prototypes illustrate how such a page may be integrated into the existing website of FSKN and in two other existing sites of relevance. These page demonstrators are operating on top of the APIs that tie into the GLN infrastructure.

These features help users discover relevant content not only from the MSU FSKN but also from sources external to the FSKN. Three demonstrations have been developed:

• FSKN training site [34]: a prototype demonstrating how new educational resource search pages may be deployed within the existing site of FSKN [35]

• Codex Alimentarius site [36]: a prototype demonstrating how material related to the Codex Alimentarius food standards can be deployed within the existing site of Codex [37]

• Coursera platform [29]: a prototype demonstrating how existing course pages in an online course platform (such as a MOOC) may be enhanced with OER search features [38]

The true potential of having such an infrastructure in place will be unleashed by the deployment of additional learning applications and platforms that will be built (or connected) using open APIs to access



the various types of information within the infrastructure. Such applications may be mobile/smartphone/tablet apps for various operational systems (such as iOS, Android, and Windows 8) that will serve as search interfaces to the content. These interfaces can be embedded in other websites and portals to allow searching into relevant content within other sites, and new platforms that will provide new shells around the content, providing novel ways in which the information may be discovered and visualized.

IV. USAGE SCENARIOS

To demonstrate the use of the learning infrastructure, we use the hypothetical example of a small meat producer in Paraguay that is exploring how it can start selling its packaged cooked ham to an international food distribution company. Their product is a high-quality one, made from pure pork ham. Still, they would like to find out more about the food safety standards of cooked ham.

Figure 2: Prototype demo of the enhanced search page of the Codex Alimentarius website [37]

The manager of the meat producer visits the Codex Alimentarius site (Figure 2) to find out more about cooked ham standards. She starts searching the content of the portal by entering the term “ham” in the search box of the portal and gets a result on “Standard for Cooked Cured Ham,” which she views to get more information about the standard. As Figure 3 shows, the resource is a Codex Standard for Cooked Cured Ham that is addressed to managers. Our user clicks on the resource to download the document and read it.



Figure 3: Viewing the metadata description of the cooked cured ham [37]

Reading through this document, the manager finds all the necessary information for ensuring that the company’s cooked ham products comply with the Codex standard. In addition, she finds a section that refers to the specific labeling that packaged cooked ham should have to adhere to the standard. Interested in finding out more about this, the user goes to the new FSKN search page (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Prototype demo of FSKN search page offering access to a variety of food safety resources [35]

At the FSKN site, the manager decides to look for a guide explaining food labeling procedures. She scrolls down the page and clicks on the “Educational Resources” icon. A landing page with the educational resources indexed by FSKN opens. She clicks on the “Guides and Reports” category icon and a list of results with relevant guides appears. Since more than 100 resources are listed in the results, she decides to search into these results by using “Food Labeling” in the search box. A shorter list of relevant results is generated, through which she identifies a “Guide on Food Labeling - Complete Texts” (Figures 5 and 6). She clicks on “View More” and reads the description and sees that this is a guide published by the WHO and FAO, presenting food labeling requirements in a compact format. After downloading and reading the document, the manager of this small company can suggest a revision in the way that the labels of their pork ham products are generated so that they comply with the general requirements.



Figure 5: Searching for a resource on food labeling [37]

Figure 6: Finding a WHO/FAO comprehensive guide on Food Labeling [37]

Later on, the manager of the small meat producer finds out that the large food distributor they would like to work with is requiring its providers to apply the HACCP standard procedures. She is visiting the FSKN site again and uses the term “HACCP” in the search box. A list of results appear, among which is an online course on HACCP Basics for Processors and Manufacturers. The manager goes to the website of this course where she finds out that for a small cost she can get a better understanding of key HACCP concepts and the steps required to properly implement them in her company. Searching further for OER, she also finds a number of good YouTube videos that explain the principles of HACCP for food safety (e.g., Figure 7).



Figure 7: An introduction to HACCP principles for food production discovered through the demonstration FSKN portal [39]

Finally, the manager of the food company decides to also register for an online MOOC on food systems in order to get a better idea of how the global food sector works. She visits the site of the Coursera platform [29] and searches for courses related to “food” using the search box. From the list of relevant courses, she finds an interesting one called Sustainability of Food Systems: A Global Life Cycle Perspective and clicks on the course title. A page with more information about the course opens (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Typical course page in Coursera [38]

In this course information page, she can scroll and find out more information about the thematic categories in which the course belongs as well as browse for more courses. In the FSKN demonstration page developed as a prototype, she can also search for educational resources that are relevant to this particular food safety course, either by clicking on the general “Browse more relevant OER” button, which returns a list of relevant material that can be found in FSKN, or by looking into specific types of resources like audio and videos, presentations, or guides and reports (Figure 9). The manager can now register for the MOOC while she is finding relevant material on food systems that she can use for self- study.



Figure 9: Demonstration of FSKN-enhanced Coursera page with information about a course [38]

V. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we describe an open and scalable learning infrastructure created as a demonstration project for the Michigan State University FSKN. We present the main objectives and the challenges of such a global food safety network, describe the rationale and the components of such a food safety learning infrastructure, and provide an overview of current technologies and standards that can make such an infrastructure a reality. Emphasis is placed on scenarios that explain how such an infrastructure may prove useful to people searching for learning material appropriate for their needs.

VI. REFERENCES

1. GLOBE (Global Learning Objects Brokering Exchange). http://www.globe-info.org 2. OpenCourseWare Consortium. http://www.ocwconsortium.org 3. OER Commons. http://www.oercommons.org 4. Organic.Edunet. http://www.organic-edunet.eu 5. Tzikopoulos, A., Manouselis, N., Costopoulou, C., Yialouris, C.P., and Sideridis, A.B.

Investigating Digital Learning Repositories' Coverage of Agriculture-Related Topics. In: Proceedings of the International Congress on Information Technologies in Agriculture, Food and Environment (ITAFE05), Adana, Turkey, October 2005.

6. Tzikopoulos, A., and Yialouris, C.P. Knowledge Repositories for Rural Communities of Learning. In: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2007), Crete, Greece, September 2007.

7. Manouselis, N., Najjar, J., Kastrantas, K., Salokhe, G., Stracke, C.M., and Duval, E. Metadata Interoperability in Agricultural Learning Repositories: An Analysis. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 70(2): 302–320 (March 2010).

8. Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF). http://aglr.aua.gr 9. agINFRA. http://aginfra.eu 10. World Health Organization. Food Safety. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/en/ 11. European Union. Food. http://ec.europa.eu/food/index_en.htm 12. Global Food Safety Initiative. http://mygfsi.com 13. Wikipedia. Agricultural Education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_education (accessed

July 3, 2013). 14. Maunder, A. Agricultural Extension: A Reference Manual. Food and Agriculture Organization of

the United Nations: Italy, 1972.

http://www.globe-info.org/

http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

http://www.oercommons.org/

http://www.organic-edunet.eu/

http://aglr.aua.gr/

http://aginfra.eu/

http://www.who.int/foodsafety/en/

http://ec.europa.eu/food/index_en.htm

http://mygfsi.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_education



15. Phipps, L.J., and Osborne, E.W. Handbook on Agricultural Education in Public Schools. Interstate Printers and Publishers: Danville, IL, 1988.

16. Leary, J., and Berge Z.L. Trends and Challenges of eLearning in National and International Agricultural Development. International Journal of Education and Development Using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT) 2(2): 51–59 (2006).

17. Dissanayeke, U., and Wickramasuriya, H. E-Learning in Agriculture Higher Education: A Case Study. Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies (JETERAPS) 1(2): 80–83 (2010).

18. Holmberg, B. Theory and Practice of Distance Education, 2nd ed. Routledge: New York, 1995. 19. Rajadekar, U.M. Distance Education for Rural Development. University News 38(41): 11–13

(2000). 20. Raut, A.A., and Shama, G. Developing Distance Learning Framework for Promoting Agriculture

Education. Indian Research Journal in Extension Education (9)3: 35–38 (2009). 21. Commonwealth of Learning. http://www.col.org 22. Academy for Distance Learning. http://www.adlhomestudy.co.uk 23. My Horse University. www.myhorseuniversity.com 24. OER Africa. AgShare. www.oerafrica.org/agshare 25. Food Safety Knowledge Network. www.foodsafetyknowledgenetwork.org 26. MOOC List. Introduction to Sustainability (Coursera). http://www.mooc-

list.com/course/introduction-sustainability-coursera 27. Global Food Protection Institute (GFPI). http://www.gfpi.org 28. Michigan State University. ANGEL. https://angel.msu.edu 29. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org 30. Udacity. https://www.udacity.com 31. FSKN Training. Resources. http://fskntraining.org/resources 32. OER Commons. OER Commons Green. http://www.oercommons.org/green 33. Agro-Know Technologies. Green Learning Network. http://www.greenlearningnetwork.org 34. FSKN Training. http://fskntraining.org 35. Green Learning Network. Food Safety Knowledge Network.

http://greenlearningnetwork.org/fskn/fskn-main 36. Codex Alimentarius. http://www.codexalimentarius.org 37. Green Learning Network. FAO Codex. http://greenlearningnetwork.org/fao-codex/FAO-codex 38. Hill, J. Sustainability of Food Systems: A Global Life Cycle Perspective. Coursera.org.

http://greenlearningnetwork.org/fskn/coursera/globalfoodsystems.html 39. Alberta Agriculture. HACCP – Making Food Products Safe, Part 1. YouTube video, 15:07. Posted

September 8, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nbjd_TnU8o

Additional Resources Andrade, A., Caine, A., Carneiro, R., Conole, G., Ehlers, U.D., Holmberg, C., Kairamo, A.K., Koskinen, T., Kretschmer, T., Moe-Pryce, N., Mundin, P., Nozes, J., Reinhardt, R., Richter, T., and Silva, G. Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices: OPAL Report 2011. Due Publico, Essen (2010). http://www.icde.org/filestore/Resources/OPAL/OPALReportpp100-134.pdf Manouselis, N., and Salokhe G. (Eds.). Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008) EConference: Summary Report. Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLRTF). http://aglr.aua.gr/files/AgLR2008.pdf (Retrieved June 2008). Stracke, C.M. Competence and Skills Modelling for European HR and Policies: Bridging Business, Education and Training Towards a Harmonized Competence Structure and Standard for Human Resources Development and Vocational Education and Training. In: Stracke, C.M. (Ed.). Competence Modelling for Human Resources Development and European Policies. Bridging Business, Education and Training: Brussels, 2011.

http://www.col.org/

http://www.adlhomestudy.co.uk/

http://www.myhorseuniversity.com/

http://www.oerafrica.org/agshare

http://www.foodsafetyknowledgenetwork.org/

http://www.gfpi.org/

http://www.coursera.org/

http://www.udacity.com/

http://fskntraining.org/resources

http://www.oercommons.org/green

http://www.greenlearningnetwork.org/

http://fskntraining.org/

http://greenlearningnetwork.org/fskn/fskn-main

http://www.codexalimentarius.org/

http://greenlearningnetwork.org/fao-codex/FAO-codex

http://greenlearningnetwork.org/fskn/coursera/globalfoodsystems.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nbjd_TnU8o

http://www.icde.org/filestore/Resources/OPAL/OPALReportpp100-134.pdf

http://aglr.aua.gr/files/AgLR2008.pdf




The Green Learning Network (GLN) infrastructure has been developed with funding support from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement n° 283770. The presented food safety demonstration project has been developed with support from MSUglobal at Michigan State University.

VIII. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Nikos Manouselis is a co-founder and the CEO of Agro-Know Technologies, Greece. He has a diploma in Electronics and Computer Engineering, an MSc in Operational Research, and an MSc in Electronics and Computer Engineering, all from the Technical University of Crete, Greece. He also holds a PhD in the application of metadata technologies in the domain of agriculture, from the Informatics Laboratory of the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), Greece. Nikos has extensive experience in designing and implementing large-scale initiatives related to open data and applications for agricultural education, research, and innovation. His research topics of interest include learning repositories and portals, educational datasets and analytics, as well as social navigation and recommendation. Charalampos Thanopoulos is an associate researcher at Agro-Know Technologies. He has a diploma in Crop Science, Specialization in Vegetable Crop Production, an MSc in Modern Systems of Crop Science, Plant Protection and Landscape Architecture Specialization in Plant Physiology of Vegetables and a PhD in pre-/post-harvest physiology of vegetables, all from the Laboratory of Vegetable Production of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece. Charalampos has strong experience in the development of learning objects, implementation of metadata schemas for the description of learning resources, creation of educational and training scenarios, and identification of competencies for professional training in agricultural topics. Christine Geith, PhD, is Assistant Provost and Executive Director of Michigan State University MSUglobal Knowledge and Learning Innovations. She leads the development of new entrepreneurial approaches in higher education using educational technology, online learning, and open models. Recently, she has worked with faculty to open up critical knowledge to help transform global food systems and agriculture. She was previously at Rochester Institute of Technology as Co-Director of the Educational Technology Center and Director of Distance Learning. Christine has a PhD from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MBA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Karen Vignare, PhD, currently serves as Associate Provost of the Center for Innovation in Learning at University of Maryland University College, leading the search and evaluation for next generation learning models. Karen is responsible for implementing collaborative innovations that may include prior learning, course design, analytics, adaptive learning, e-resources, open educational resources, instructional design changes, and competency based models. She was previously a Director at MSUglobal at Michigan State University. MSUglobal is responsible for helping departments at MSU integrate emerging technologies. She has a PhD from Nova Southeastern University and an MBA from the University of Rochester’s William Simon School of Business.



cMOOCs and Global Learning: An Authentic Alternative


CMOOCS AND GLOBAL LEARNING: AN AUTHENTIC ALTERNATIVE

Carol Yeager Betty Hurley-Dasgupta SUNY Empire State College

Catherine A. Bliss University of Vermont

ABSTRACT Massive open online courses (MOOCs) continue to attract press coverage as they change almost daily in their format, number of registrations, and potential for credentialing. An enticing aspect of the MOOC is its global reach. In this paper, we will focus on a type of MOOC called a cMOOC because it is based on the theory of connectivism and fits the definition of an open educational resource (OER) identified for this special edition of JALN. We begin with a definition of the cMOOC and a discussion of the connectivism on which it is based. Definitions and a research review are followed with a description of two MOOCs offered by two of the authors. Research on one of these MOOCs completed by a third author is presented as well. Student comments that demonstrate how a cMOOC can facilitate intercultural connections are shared. We end with reflections, lessons learned, and recommendations.

KEY WORDS MOOC, connectivism, personal learning networks, open learning, OER, international education, creativity, multiculturalism, metaliteracy

I. INTRODUCTION

The landscape of education is changing thanks to the introduction of massive open online courses, also known as MOOCs. A November 2012 New York Times article named 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC” [1], with edX enrolling 350,000 in its first offering and Coursera nearing 2 million enrollments. More recently, in an editorial titled “Revolution Hits the Universities,” political columnist Thomas Friedman predicts that “within five years these platforms will reach a much broader demographic” [2]. He goes on to state, “Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic.” Friedman also relates some specific student success stories, many connected with the informal forums connected with the courses, rather than the content. One aspect of MOOCs is agreed upon in the article—the landscape is quickly changing and what we see now will look different in a short time. In publicity and articles about MOOCs, the creators of the original open online course are rarely mentioned. Yet what they originally conceived may actually be the model that will impact education most in the long run. The term MOOC dates back to 2008, when Dave Cormier, from the University of Prince Edward Island, and Bryan Alexander, of the National Institute for Technology (Canada), responded to an open online course designed and led by George Siemens, from Athabasca University, and Stephen Downes, from The National Research Council (Canada). The course was called Connectivism and Connective Knowledge



(CCK) and was presented to 25 tuition-paying students at the University of Manitoba, in addition to 2,300 other students from the general public who took the online class free of charge. All course content was available through RSS feeds, and learners could participate with their choice of tools: threaded discussions in Moodle, blog posts, Second Life, or synchronous online meetings [3]. This was the first course to incorporate open learning with distributed content. Other MOOCs followed, many offered by Siemens, Downes, and Cormier. PLENK (Personal Learning Environments, Networked Knowledge) was offered in 2010. Others have included CCK11 (Connectivism and Connective Knowledge) and ChangeMOOC. And a more recent cMOOC on the subject of educational technology, called etMOOC, began in January 2013. This MOOC claims more than 2,000 registrants and 493 subscribed blogs with representatives from more than 80 countries [4]. MOOCs diversified significantly with a MOOC on artificial intelligence offered by Sebastian Thrun in 2011, in which more than 80,000 enrolled. Thrun then left Stanford to begin his own company, Udacity. Udacity was soon followed by Coursera, which now offers more than 200 courses from an impressive list of 33 institutions, including eight international institutions [5]. Although all MOOCs are easily available to anyone with web access, those from Coursera and Udacity do not fit the usual definition of OER because both require that registrants sign agreements not to reuse, modify, or redistribute [6]. In fact, the legal documents on each site are worded rather strongly in the opposite direction, imposing significant restrictions on use [7, 8]. In addition, some have questioned the supposed benefits of increased cultural understanding through these offerings, since they are primarily lectures from well-published U.S. faculty [9]. In an often-referenced blog post [10], Lisa Lane identifies three types of MOOCs: network-based (commonly referred to as cMOOCs, the subject of this paper); task-based (like Jim Groom’s DS106 Digital Storytelling); and content-based (like those from Coursera and Udacity, also often referred to as xMOOCs.) Each type of MOOC contains components of all three types Lane mentions, but in each, one of these aspects (network-based, task-based, or content-based) is prevalent. cMOOCs, or network-based MOOCs, fit the definition of OER and are the subject of this paper about MOOCs as OERs for international development. In this article, we will define a cMOOC, talk about why these are valuable learning resources, and then provide some examples of MOOCs to illustrate our claims. We will end with some reflections on lessons learned.

A. About cMOOCs cMOOCs are based on the concept of connectivism. Basically, connectivism is a network-based theory focusing on the learning that occurs through the connections made among learners and learning objects. According to Downes:

At its heart, connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. Knowledge, therefore, is not acquired, as though it were a thing. It is not transmitted, as though it were some type of communication. … And while it is convenient to talk as though knowledge and beliefs are composed of sentences and concepts that we somehow acquire and store, it is more accurate—and pedagogically more useful—to treat learning as the formation of connections [11].

Based on this theory, four activities are key to a cMOOC: aggregation (sometimes referred to as curation, accomplished through an initial list of resources on the MOOC website and then added to through a daily newsletter sent to all participants); remixing (where the connections are made and documented through blogging, social bookmarking, or tweeting); repurposing (often referred to as constructivism, in which learners then create their own internal connections); and feeding forward (that is, sharing new connections with others). The connectivist approach is based on emerging technologies that are immersed in networks. As Kop, Fournier, and Mak have stated in their research article about cMOOCs, “Emergent technologies provide



different models and structures to support learning. They disrupt the notion that learning should be controlled by educators and educational institutions as information and ‘knowledgeable others’ are readily available on online networks through the press of a button for anyone interested in expanding his or her horizon” [12]. A visual model for learning in an open environment such as a cMOOC is provided by Kop [13]:

Figure 1: Model for Learning in an Open Environment (used with permission)

Kop, Fournier, and Mak go on to say that “the MOOC acts as an environment in which new forms of distribution, storage, archiving, and retrieval offer the potential for the development of shared knowledge and forms of distributed cognition” [14]. Other research about cMOOCs has been completed [15], and in a separate article, Kop addressed the challenges related to her experience with PLENK. She noted three specific areas of challenge: presence, learner autonomy, and critical literacies. Regarding presence, she observed the large number of lurkers and low number of participants who went beyond the stage of aggregating. As for learner autonomy, she noted the high degree of autonomy needed to be successful when taking a MOOC. And she identified rather sophisticated literacies connected with online networks needed to maneuver in a MOOC. Another research article by deWaard et al. concerned MobiMOOC [16], a MOOC about mobile learning. Through participant surveys, they found in this MOOC a broad cross section of ages representing 29 countries. They also found significant interaction and sharing among participants. In addition, when asked if they shared ideas from the MOOC with other networks, all said yes, citing colleagues (face-to-face and virtual), friends, and family. The authors recommended more research to help MOOCs effectively maximize their self-organizing, self-referencing, and knowledge-producing capabilities.



B. cMOOCs and Literacies for Twenty-First Century Learners Connectivism and the enabling of connectivism through a cMOOC relates quite well with recent discourse about literacies and skills necessary for twenty-first century learners. For example, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) recently published the definition of needed literacies for learners [17]:

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology; • Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally; • Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; • Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; • Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts; • Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.

The Connected Learning Research Network also recently published an extensive paper about connected learning [18]. Although the focus of their report was on connected learning and youth, the principles shared can be applied to all generations. They state that the core properties of connected learning are that it is production centered, has a shared purpose, and is openly networked. And they argue that the crucial contexts for learning that are knitted together by connected learning are that they are peer supported, interest powered, and academically oriented. Connected learning occurs in the intersection of these three areas [19]. We propose that cMOOCs, as connectivist environments, support connected learning. They are clearly networks, and they also exist in the intersection of peer support, shared interest, and academic orientation. In addition, cMOOCs serve as an environment where the development of the literacies defined by NCTE can be facilitated.

II. A CMOOC EXAMPLE WITH AN INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

In the fall of 2011, two of the authors developed and facilitated a cMOOC titled Creativity and Multicultural Communication, also known as CMC11. This cMOOC is still available at http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/. The model used for the cMOOC was the one used for previous cMOOCs facilitated by Downes, Cormier, and Siemens. In fact, it could not have been offered at all without the help of Stephen Downes, who uploaded and assisted with the use of his creation, gRSShopper [20], which connected the parts of the MOOC and enabled the aggregation and publishing of Newposts. Newposts was a daily publication sent out to all subscribers to the MOOC, which provided participants with announcements as well as links and content of postings to the discussion board, registered blogs and Twitter that used #cml the previous day. Help with technical aspects was also provided by RetSam Zhang, a valuable connection gained from a previous cMOOC. One pedagogical model for this MOOC has a creativity-based underpinning known as TIM (Torrance Incubation Model) [21]. E. Paul Torrance, well known for his tests of creative thinking, developed this model for his work with teacher training programs and the U.S. Armed Forces as well as for studies globally. TIM served as a good foundational model for our MOOC on creativity. The complete explanation for the various stages of TIM may be found in the book coauthored with T. Safter [22]. TIM has three basic stages, and it was around these stages that CMC11 was designed, as delineated in the following bullets:

• Stage 1: Heightening Anticipation (confronting ambiguities and uncertainties; stimulating curiosity and taking steps beyond the comfort zone of what is known; preparing to build on prior knowledge in new territory)—the first four weeks’ discussions and presentations set the stage for a different learning style through concepts such as connectivism and personal learning networks.

• Stage 2: Deepening Expectations (encountering the expected and unexpected)—weeks five through seven centered on aspects of creativity and creative thinking in practice for lifelong skill

http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/



building including greater comfort with ambiguity. Creativity, risk, and innovation were major themes discussed. Expected definitions of creativity became unexpected understanding and expanded horizons of abilities.

• Stage 3: Keeping It Going (going beyond the exploration of creativity into the applications of business, education, and global communication and comparing different theories and practices of immersive, online learning)—the next five weeks showed applications of creative problem solving, creative thinking, and approaches to a variety of venues and opened thinking for further exploration and implementation of creativity in a multitude of realms.

• The final week involved the implementation of the prior weeks’ connectivist learning through a presentation by some of the participants.

While other pedagogical models may have similar segmentation, the internal elements of each week further defined the Torrance incubation model with materials supplied, activities for participant engagement, and topical, often interactive, video (Blackboard Collaborate) discussions with various experts in a wide range of subtopics in creativity, education/learning, global communication, and business models. Especially in the first stage of the CMC11 MOOC, our focus was on raising awareness of new literacies and identifying ways to develop those literacies. We were fortunate to have Stephen Downes present on connectivism [23], followed by George Siemens on personal learning environments (PLEs) the following week [24]. The interaction during these sessions was lively, as participants grappled with these new approaches to learning. Participants then reflected through blog entries on what they had learned. These topics were then followed with a presentation by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson on metaliteracy and transliteracy. In the session, they referred to ideas put forth in a recent article they had written on the topic [25]. They discussed in the session the “shift in emphasis on discrete skills to collaborative production and sharing of information using participatory interactive technologies” [26]. They also discussed the centrality of user-generated information, which is at the core of a cMOOC. Each day during the fall of 2011, registrants received a Newposts that provided any tweets including #CMC11 from the previous day, blog posts from subscribed blogs containing #CMC11, and contributions to the discussion board on the CMC11 site. Newposts also contained announcements about upcoming events. Participants could then connect with other participants through these blog posts. In the next section, we will share some data about those connections.

A. Some Data on CMC11 While not massive by current MOOC standards, our MOOC has gained 515 registrants, 28 of whom registered for college credit with SUNY Empire State College and were attached to a Learning Contract. More importantly, there were 67 registered blogs whose related content (using #cmc11), along with Twitter feeds were shared in a daily Newposts, whose contents had been gathered through the RSS aggregator, gRSShopper. In addition, some participants (52), started a Facebook group called CMC11, which is still active. And members of the MOOC have also participated in Google+ hangouts, some of which have been recorded and posted in the CMC11 MOOC. Of the 515 total registrants, 362 remained engaged as of January 2013, 17 months after the inception of CMC11. There were 347 registrants in 2011, 155 in 2012, and currently there were 13 registrants as of the first three weeks of January 2013 (9 of whom are SUNY Empire State College credit-seeking individuals). An important observation about the cMOOC can be made about its longevity and continuous renewal. Participants in the “original” MOOC are now networking with students enrolled in the MOOC in spring 2013, over a year later. An analysis of the interactions in CMC11 was completed by a third author, a graduate student at University of Vermont. Interactions within the MOOC were analyzed by examining the time-stamped



messages posted through blogs, tweets, and discussions. These posts also included responses made by the MOOC facilitators and participants. Additionally, Facebook "wall" posts, manually retrieved, helped to characterize the interaction pattern in the MOOC. E-mail between course participants was not included in the dataset. A dynamic social network representing interaction and lurking behavior aggregated at the timescale of weeks and a network based on the accumulation of participation evidenced by posts and lurking behavior were constructed. Visualizations of these networks were rendered using the Gephi, an open-source tool for network visualization. Figure 2 shows the interaction that occurred over the first four months of the MOOC (September– December 2011). In this visualization, participants are represented by a node, and interaction (as evidenced by replies) is depicted as a link. The size of the nodes is proportional to the number of posts made during the time period of the study, and the thickness of the links is proportional to the number of replies sent from one user to another. The colors indicate the eigenvector centrality score, with darker green indicating a higher score and pink indicating a lower score. Eigenvector centrality is one measure that can help quantify the relative influence or importance of a node in its position within a network. The largest node (and the one with the highest eigenvector centrality) is one of the course facilitators. Through the course of the CMC11 MOOC, a large, active core emerged (see Fig. 3). This visualization depicts interactions within the first four months of the CMC11 MOOC. The colors represent distinct communities detected by the community-detection algorithm used by Gephi. Of particular interest in this figure is the large, active community shown in pink. On the periphery, many individual or 2-node communities are shown in various colors, indicating that they were not part of the large core. The development of the core was one of the essential ingredients that may have led to the success of the CMC11 MOOC. This visualization supports the connectivist theory for learning and information flow. Figure 4 shows that the number of posts per day reached a maximum in mid-October. Blogs were the most frequent type of posts in the early weeks of the MOOC, followed by tweets and Facebook-group wall posts in the later weeks.



Figure 2. A visualization of the first four months of the CMC11 MOOC. The size of the nodes is proportional to the number of replies made by that participant,

and the thickness of the edges connecting users is proportional to the number of replies between users.

http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/jaln/v17n2/cmoocs




Figure 3. A large connected component comprised one of the communities

detected by Gephi's community-detection algorithm (pink). Other colors indicate smaller (including singleton) communities.





Figure 4. The number of posts (by type) over the course of the study period peaks in early mid-October. Peaks seem to correlate with Google hangout dates

and guest speaker live sessions. Figure 5 shows the number of posts sorted by the day of the week. While course activity was consistent, peaks are noticeable, with Wednesday and Thursday being the days with the greatest number of posts.



Figure 5. The number of posts sorted by day of week reveals that the days with the greatest number of posts were

Wednesday and Thursday. Twitter activity seems to be the predominant contributor for Wednesday, while blogging was heaviest on Thursday.

In Figure 2, note the large number of dots on the outside without connecting arrows. These were lurkers, those who took away content, but did not move to the next level of remixing. Since they did not contribute to the MOOC, it is unclear what benefit they gained from their activity. Similar questions to those Rita Kop raised with the PLENK cMOOC can be raised about the lurkers regarding presence [27]. Of the 67 registered blogs, 27 were from students participating in the MOOC as part of a credit-bearing course. These participants became part of an essential critical mass for the MOOC connections to grow from since, as learners seeking credit, they had a Learning Contract that required registration of a blog. Evaluation was based on blog entries and a final project. These are the stated criteria for evaluation in the Learning Contract with one of the authors as instructor/facilitator:

CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION

Evaluation will be based on participation in the MOOC, reflections in the blog, references shared and annotated in Diigo and discussions in Diigo. By the end of the term, the student is expected to: 1. Be able to describe connectivism to a newcomer to the concept in a way that the listener is then able to explain it to another person 2. Have identified for himself or herself a personal learning environment/knowledge network that s/he will continue to use for lifelong learning 3. Have found and shared (on Diigo) at least 10 electronic resources on the topic of creativity and multiculturalism



4. Have reflected in at least two blog posts about what it means to communicate in a global environment 5. Demonstrate improved creativity through applying techniques covered in sessions on creative problem solving 6. (For 3–4 credits) have demonstrated through a creative final project a connecting, integrating, and transforming demonstration of what has been learned throughout the term.

Individual blog reflections give a sense of how learners interacted within the MOOC space: 1. I wasn't sure exactly how this class was going to turn out. Having felt lost in the beginning, I

chose to go with the flow which allowed me to open up creatively in the course and reflect on all that it was we were learning. This go with the flow attitude brought me to the conclusion that this might be the best way to operate in life when times change and newness rolls it. Without fighting the current, we are free to soar and find our way towards whatever it is we are destined to do. This is a much easier and comforting way to go about life as it throws its twists and turns at you. There has also been a sense of confidence instilled in me from this course. Through creating and sharing my final presentation with the class, I learned how fear affects us all in so many similar ways. Through sharing with the group on my blog, in discussion posts and on the final project, I've learned that most people have more in common than you would normally think. As a result, I felt freer to be me and can now carry this confidence moving forward. Next time in taking another MOOC, I would try and create my communication circle of people whom I find interesting and whose sharing I appreciate most, a little sooner so that I may get even more out of the learning. It was only by the end of #CMC11 that I found the people whom I enjoyed interacting with most. In conclusion, I've gained a lot of insight, confidence and perspective from this course and look forward to someday MOOCing again in the future. Thanks to all of my classmates for sharing your thoughts... This is Aaron "Drum man"…signing off from #CMC11...” [28]

2. The MOOC has provided me with a road map of sharing information, ideas, or just simple everyday occurrences. The MOOC has empowered me, inspiring me with ideas of global communication. The MOOC has allowed me to "step out of my box." It has dared me to try new things in turn opening up a whole new world to me. Blogging is not a self-centered page dedicated to my thoughts. Blogging can empower me to share a world of knowledge with others and in turn learn through engaging with others and receiving their responses and positions on things further enlightening me. It is evident through the MOOC that changes are occurring rapidly and that in order for us to stay current we must adapt to the technologies. The MOOC has also shown how to stay connected. Technology can be used for social networks and hours lost in wasteful activities but through the MOOC I have learned how to better use social networks, blogging, MOOC courses, etc. The biggest thing I am looking forward to taking with me from this course is applying everything that enlightened me and applying to my life and interests. Connecting with others around the world and sharing my ideas, learning of theirs and learning from each other [29].

3. The MOOC has definitely inspired me. It has me writing poetry again, involved more with my yoga practice, motivated me to draw and take photographs. It has reawaken [sic] me, enlightened me and challenged me to do more. The MOOC was everything [others] said it would be. A just dive in and get feet wet experience. I now have a thirst for the MOOC and the endless possibilities it has to offer. [30]

In fall 2012, the same two authors offered a second MOOC, titled VizMath (http://math.cdlprojects.com/). Topics addressed the beauty of math in many visualizations, such as through crocheting, origami, and the work of Escher. This MOOC remained relatively small, at 76 registrations, and registered blogs and tweets were also low (36). From this experience, we gained a

http://math.cdlprojects.com/)



valuable lesson—one needs to ensure a critical mass of registered blogs in order to maintain a cMOOC’s necessary connections. Also, since the MOOC did not begin with an introduction to connectivism, PLEs, and metaliteracy as CMC11 did, participants were not provided with the background they probably needed to benefit from the connectivist approach of the MOOC.

III. REFLECTIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED

The difference between the experiences we had with the two MOOCs has enriched our reflection on MOOCs. We have often pondered about the reasons for the low connectivism within VizMath. Certainly, some of the observations by Kop [31] about presence and identity coincide well with our experience. For VizMath, getting the word out was a major challenge. Although there are math-related tweets, there are few math-related blogs. And the math lovers had their own resources. Our primary interest was in reaching those who did not love math, but their motivation to engage in a math-related activity was understandably low. So our intended participants were the very ones who did not identify with the topic of the MOOC. Although not much connectivism surfaced, the videos from the sessions are now on YouTube (search for VizMath) and are getting viewings. So connectivity, although subtle and not measurable, does exist. As mentioned earlier, several factors led to the success of CMC11. First of all, scaffolding was provided to help participants acknowledge and develop the literacies needed to be successful learners in a MOOC environment. The quotes given in the previous section support the effectiveness and necessity of this scaffolding. Second, the MOOC benefitted from having a core of active participants. So one recommendation we offer is for cMOOC developers to consider ways to ensure a critical mass of participants for their MOOCs. The continuing work of Mackey and Jacobson [32] will inform the development of future cMOOCs. One of the key aspects of metaliteracy is moving “beyond skills development to an understanding of information as dynamically produced and shared online” [33]. The challenge with the cMOOC is to create an engaging environment to encourage participants to do this creating, rather than remain at the aggregating phase. The final reflections from some participants show the excitement that comes from experiencing metaliteracy. But so far a limited number of participants are experiencing this benefit. Clearly, we need to scaffold the development of metaliteracy skills for learning through cMOOCs. Some scaffolding could be accomplished by incorporating more self-assessment into the MOOC. For future MOOCs, we plan to incorporate shared rubrics to help participants assess their own metaliteracy skills. The cMOOC is proven as an environment for multicultural exchange. One of the CMC11 international participants puts it best:

Suddenly, thanks to this course, I had access to so many different voices and perspectives from around the world. At times it was challenging to follow conversations but it was interesting how some individuals found each other within the network of vast connections. … I feel that these courses have a huge potential to create opportunities for international exchange and connect individuals, groups and ideas. At the moment, my own experience and conversations I had with peers and colleagues confirm that reaching out and connecting with others at the other side of the world is happening in MOOCs and some connections also survive and thrive beyond a course. I have such examples, one from New Zealand and one from the US and while qualitative they are not that massive, qualitative they are important to me and both individuals have become vital part of my personal learning network. Would I ever had the chance to meet these individuals otherwise? I think the chances are limited [34].

IV. SUMMARY/CONCLUSIONS

In this article, we have defined cMOOCs and then shared two specific examples, providing some analysis of the interactions within the cMOOC. Our experiences coincide with the reflections by McAuley, Stewart, Siemens, and Cormier in their report, “The MOOC Model for Digital Practice” [35]. They



propose that the MOOC model serves as an ecology for exploring and developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes individuals need to thrive in the current digital economy [36]. They argue that “MOOCs reduce barriers to information access and to the dialogue that permits individuals to gain knowledge” [37]. In their report, they raise essential research questions about MOOCs, including questions about learner roles. In our MOOCs, we often discussed learner roles, for example, in the different behavior of credit- seeking learners. And although it is difficult to obtain, more information is needed about what lurkers gain from the MOOC. Another critical area for investigation, especially as some MOOCs begin to move into the credentialing area, is how to assess learning from MOOCs. Returning to the list of critical literacies for twenty-first century learners, we clearly need different strategies of assessment beyond testing content knowledge. A special edition of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) will address research questions about MOOCs. Assessing learning from MOOCs is one area solicited in the call for paper proposals for that journal [38]. Although challenges exist for cMOOCs, we still see them as valuable environments for developing and celebrating metaliteracy skills, which we have identified, along with NCTE, as an essential skill for the twenty-first century. And because of their openness, MOOCs have the flexibility to meet a wide range of needs. Content from a cMOOC can be easily reused and remixed to fit different cohorts’ makeups and interests. They provide the opportunity to strengthen lifelong learning skills. And new participants can benefit from the previous creations and contributions because of their continuous renewal. In fact, facilitators also benefit from the exchange of ideas that thrives in a well-functioning cMOOC. One value of the cMOOC is that it continues to be a vital, thriving community. As noted, both CMC11 and VizMath still exist, and CMC11 has been especially active since its inception in 2011. Given that the special edition of JALN on OERs and online learning for international development will be distributed in May, we propose hosting several special sessions for one or both cMOOCs in the summer of 2013. These synchronous events can then spark new uses for these environments, in the spirit of the connectivist model.

V. REFERENCES

1. Papano, L. The Year of the MOOC. The New York Times, November 2, 2012. Accessed January 15, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are- multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

2. Friedman, T. Revolution Hits the Universities. The New York Times, January 26, 2013. Accessed January 27, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/friedman-revolution-hits- the-universities.html.

3. Wikipedia. Massive Open Online Course. Accessed October 24, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course.

4. etMOOC. About. Accessed February 4, 2013. http://etmooc.org/sample-page/. 5. Friedman, T. Revolution Hits the Universities. The New York Times, January 26, 2013. Accessed

January 27, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/friedman-revolution-hits- the-universities.html.

6. UNESCO. Open Educational Resources. Accessed January 15, 2013. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open- educational-resources/.

7. Coursera. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Accessed January 15, 2013. https://www.coursera.org/about/terms.

8. Udacity. Legal. Accessed January 15, 2013. https://www.udacity.com/legal/tos.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/friedman-revolution-hits-


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

http://etmooc.org/sample-page/



http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-

http://www.coursera.org/about/terms

http://www.udacity.com/legal/tos



9. Lane, J. and Kinser, K. MOOCs and the McDonaldization of Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 28, 2012. Accessed January 10, 2013. http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/moocs-mass-education-and-the-mcdonaldization-of-higher- education/30536.

10. Lane, L. Three Kinds of MOOCs. Accessed September 20, 2012. http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/2012/08/three-kinds-of-moocs/.

11. Downes, S. Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. January 5, 2011. Accessed June 5, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/connectivism-and-connecti_b_804653.html

12. Kop, R., Fournier, H., and Mak, J. A Pedagogy of Abundance or a Pedagogy to Support Human Beings: Participant Support on Massive Open Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (12)7: 75–93 (2011). Retrieved January 10, 2013. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1041/2042, p.75.

13. Kop, R. The Design and Development of a Personal Learning Environment: Researching the Learning Experience. Paper H4 32 presented at the European Distance and E-learning Network Annual Conference 2010, June 9–12, Valencia, Spain.

14. Kop, R., Fournier, H. and Mak, J. A Pedagogy of Abundance or a Pedagogy to Support Human Beings: Participant Support on Massive Open Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (12)7: 75–93 (2011). Retrieved January 10, 2013. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1041/2042, p.78.

15. Kop, R. The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences During a Massive Open Online Course. The International Review of Research in Open and Online Learning 12(3): 19–38 (2011). Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/882.

16. deWaard, I., Koutropoulos, A., Hogue, R.J., Abajian, S.C., Keskin, N.Ö., Rodriguez, C.O., and Gallagher, M.S. Merging MOOC and mLearning for Increased Learner Interactions. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL) 4(4): 34–46 (2012). doi:10.4018/jmbl.2012100103.

17. NCTE. The NCTE definition of 21st Century Literacies. Accessed January 22, 2013. http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition.

18. Mizuko, Ito et al. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Research Learning Hub, 2013. Accessed January 5, 2013. http://dmlhub.net/sites/default/files/ConnectedLearning_report.pdf.

19. Mizuko, Ito et al. Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Research Learning Hub, 2013. Accessed January 5, 2013. http://dmlhub.net/sites/default/files/ConnectedLearning_report.pdf, p.12.

20. Downes, S. gRSShopper. Accessed Feb 13, 2013. http://grsshopper.downes.ca/. 21. Torrance, E.P. The Search for Satori and Creativity. Buffalo, NY: Bearly Limited, 1979. 22. Torrance, E.P. and Safter, T. The Incubation Model of Teaching. Buffalo, NY: Bearly Limited,

1990. 23. Downes, S. Connectivism. Accessed December 10, 2012.

http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/contents/week-2-untitled/. 24. Siemens, G. PLE. Accessed December 10. 2012.

http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/contents/week-3-untitled/. 25. Mackey, T. and Jacobson, T. Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy. College and

Research Libraries 72(1): 62–78 (2011). Retrieved January 10, 2013. http://crl.acrl.org/content/72/1/62.full.pdf+html.

26. Mackey, T. and Jacobson, T. Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy. College and Research Libraries 72(1): 62–78. (2011). Retrieved January 10, 2013. http://crl.acrl.org/content/72/1/62.full.pdf+html, p.70.

27. Kop, R. The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences during a Massive Open Online Course. The International Review of Research in Open and Online

http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/moocs-mass-education-and-the-mcdonaldization-of-higher-

http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/moocs-mass-education-and-the-mcdonaldization-of-higher-

http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/2012/08/three-kinds-of-moocs/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-downes/connectivism-and-connecti_b_804653.html

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1041/2042

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1041/2042

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/882

http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/21stcentdefinition

http://dmlhub.net/sites/default/files/ConnectedLearning_report.pdf

http://dmlhub.net/sites/default/files/ConnectedLearning_report.pdf

http://grsshopper.downes.ca/

http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/contents/week-2-untitled/

http://www.cdlprojects.com/cmc11blog/contents/week-3-untitled/

http://crl.acrl.org/content/72/1/62.full.pdf%2Bhtml




Learning 12(3): 19–38 (2011). Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/882.

28. Stern, A. (2011, December 20) My MOOC Experience #CMC11. (blog comment). Retrieved from http://aarongoestocollege.tumblr.com/post/14508602240/my-mooc-experience-cmc11.

29. Reflections of the MOOC CMC11. (blog comment). Retrieved from http://dani- cmc.blogspot.com/2011/12/reflections-of-mooc-cmc11.html.

30. The MOOC and Me (CMC11). (blog comment) Retrieved from http://dani- cmc.blogspot.ca/2011/12/hooc-me-cmc11.html.

31. Kop, R. The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences during a Massive Open Online Course. The International Review of Research in Open and Online Learning 12(3): 19–38 (2011). Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/882.

32. Mackey, T. and Jacobson, T. Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy. College and Research Libraries. 72(1): 62–78 (2011). Retrieved January 10, 2013. http://crl.acrl.org/content/72/1/62.full.pdf+html.

33. Mackey, T. and Jacobson, T. Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy. College and Research Libraries 72(1): 62–78 (2011). Retrieved January 10, 2013. http://crl.acrl.org/content/72/1/62.full.pdf+html, p. 70.

34. Nerantzi, C. E-mail message to author, December 2011. 35. McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., and Cormier, D. The MOOC Model for Digital Practice.

Accessed December 5, 2012. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf. 36. McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., and Cormier, D. The MOOC Model for Digital Practice,

p. 5. Accessed December 5, 2012. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf. 37. McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G., and Cormier, D. The MOOC Model for Digital Practice,

p. 33. Accessed December 5, 2012. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf. 38. International Society for Presence Research. Call: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) –

Special Issue of Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT). Accessed November 15, 2012. http://ispr.info/2012/10/26/call-massive-open-online-courses-moocs-special-issue-of-journal-of- online-learning-and-teaching-jolt/.

VI. ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Carol Yeager has been a mentor with SUNY Empire State College for more than 20 years. As a lifelong learner with a MFA, she recently earned an MS degree in Creativity and Change Leadership from Buffalo State. Currently, online global and open learning is of particular interest for her research and practice. Betty Hurley-Dasgupta is a professor and area coordinator of mathematics at the Center for Distance Learning at SUNY Empire State College. She has an EdD in mathematics education from the University of Rochester. Her current interests are personal learning environments, OERs, and ePortfolios, especially for STEM learning. Catherine A. Bliss is a doctoral candidate in Mathematics at the University of Vermont. She is interested in social network analysis, online discourse and connected learning environments.


http://aarongoestocollege.tumblr.com/post/14508602240/my-mooc-experience-cmc11

http://dani-/

http://dani-/

http://dani-/

http://dani-/




http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/MOOC_Final.pdf



http://ispr.info/2012/10/26/call-massive-open-online-courses-moocs-special-issue-of-journal-of-

http://ispr.info/2012/10/26/call-massive-open-online-courses-moocs-special-issue-of-journal-of-

Documents

Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks · of multiple rural farm communities and cooperatives. The USIU agribusiness training course was developed as OER to help both farmers (who