Topic 2: Open Learning – Sharing and Openness

Sharing and openness is a vital and new approach to learning and developing skills in the educational environment. We look at so many new concepts and tools that we didn’t have many years ago and we are still adapting to these new methods of sharing online compared to the traditional method. Open educational resources(OER) is a good method to share and it is open for others to use but in South Africa there are still some costs when it comes to this method. Online resources may lie more in enabling our students’ learning experience than in saving time developing resources.

According to Forbes, (2015) Students naturally learn from one another while solving problems and working collaboratively in a traditional classroom. Education is different in each part of the world. Similarly, the state of open education depends of the social, economic, and cultural context of each region. However, there is a global awareness of the importance of promoting education as a vehicle for development, which is why there are open education initiatives in every region of the planet.

Learners and students do not always have access to computers or internet as it is expensive cost and depending which area they are coming from whether being rural areas. With OER the issue arises if the content is free are there any payments from accessing them, as students only use to rely on textbooks which are expensive to purchase and sometimes to source. According to Karabell, (2017) schools have embraced the online world because it allows them to use the power of their brand to extend everywhere.

In Global South faces several key interrelated challenges, for which Open Educational Resources (OER) are seen to be part of the solution. These challenges include: unequal access to education; variable quality of educational resources, teaching, and student performance; and increasing cost and concern about the sustainability of education. The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project seeks to build on and contribute to the body of research on how OER can help to improve access.

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