Uploading abstract for Joint OER Production and Support Workshop in Kumasi in October 2012. Other files from the workshop can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/tag/oerghana

1. Proposed Ghana Cross-Institutional Workshop for OER Production
Kathleen Ludewig Omollo, U-M Project Manager for African Health OER Network
Version: October 3, 2011
While we convene senior leadership from the African institutions for our biennial health OER cross-
institutional multi-country meetings, limited travel funds prohibit us from holding similar
gatherings for the staff that work with faculty members to produce OER. These staffers tasked with
copyright clearance or multimedia enhancements do not have an opportunity to interact with
individuals who play similar roles at other institutions. To address this, we envision a 2-day cross-
institutional “train the trainer” workshop designed to give individuals the policy, instructional
design, multimedia, and technical expertise necessary to support the development and distribution
of media-rich OER. Intended participants include individuals who currently support or are
planning to support production, distribution, discovery, and adaptation of OER, such as: multimedia
support specialists, technology specialists, software developers, system administrators, and
librarians.
University of Michigan (U-M) currently facilitate two mailing lists and bi-monthly teleconferences:
one for dScribes to discuss copyright clearance and student engagement in OER and another for
multimedia and technology specialists to discuss instructional design, publishing platforms, and
content development. The regular calls and email exchanges have been helpful to compare and
contrast institutional practices and support for OER production, but these groups would greatly
benefit from a one-time in-person meeting. An intensive in-person workshop would enable hands-
on experimentation with software and audiovisual equipment, facilitate greater dialogue around
policy issues such as copyright and privacy and how they differ across institutions and strengthen
the sense of community of peers dispersed across the country working toward the common goal of
building an African Health OER Network.1
The workshop would be held in Ghana. It would bring together individuals who been involved in
multimedia or policy support for OER at their home institutions, ideally 8-12 staff members from 2-
4 institutions across Ghana. The workshop will be highly participatory, with staff members from
the Ghanaian institutions and U-M alternating as presenters and facilitators of the technical
sessions.
This workshop would build upon previous policy and OER production workshops conducted by U-
M and OER Africa at several African institutions and train new participants who have joined since
the earlier workshops. Past workshops include:
• In February 2009, OERA conducted policy review workshops at University of Ghana (UG)
and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) to examine the
institutional policies related to OER.
• In tandem, U-M conducted a 2-day workshop at KNUST and UG with a high-level overview
of OER production process.2
• In July 2009, U-M conducted a full-day hands-on software workshop at UG and KNUST.3
• Later that month, OER Africa and U-M facilitated a 3-day workshop with 40 faculty and staff
representing 8 African health science institutions where participants jointly developed a
Declaration of Support for the Network.4
• In August 2009, U-M conducted a half-day training workshop for faculty and staff at the
1
http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer
2
https://open.umich.edu/wiki/images/e/e0/FEB_2009_OER_Production_Workshop_Agenda_
%E2%80%93_KNUST.doc
3
https://open.umich.edu/wiki/images/4/44/July_2009_OER_Software_Workshop_-_Ghana.doc
4
http://www.oerafrica.org/healthoer/HealthOERHome/SupportOER/tabid/1330/Default.aspx

2. Proposed Ghana Cross-Institutional Workshop for OER Production
Kathleen Ludewig Omollo, U-M Project Manager for African Health OER Network
Version: October 3, 2011
University of the Western Cape on the dScribe process, a distributed model for copyright
clearance and OER production.5
• In October 2010, U-M conducted a 2-hour workshop with faculty at KNUST on design
principles for creating eLearning materials.6
Our objectives for the proposed workshop are as follows:
• To provide an opportunity for show-and-tell presentations by institutions on OER produced
and methods used;
• To present a walk-through, start-to-finish, of the OER production process;
• To discuss instructional design and interactive design principles for educational content;
• To demonstrate how to search for and locate OER and other Creative Commons or public
content that may be adapted for content development;
• To teach participants how to record sound and video;
• To provide participants with the basic skills to edit HTML, sound, and video;
• To instruct participants on open source and proprietary content authoring tools;
• To provide a basic overview of important OER policy areas, including copyright, privacy,
and endorsement;
• To teach participants how to identify, classify and clear third-party content contained
within educational materials;
• To explore software platforms for hosting OER, including metadata standards and export
functionality;
• To discuss distribution methods (e.g. online, offline, mobile) for sharing OER on campus and
worldwide; and
• To examine analytics and other systematic methods to track usage of OER.
The end product of this workshop will be a collection of Creative Commons-licensed instructional
guides and recordings of the workshop presentations to be shared with OER support staff and a
plan for the next set of collaborative activities among OER support staff at the member institutions
of the African Health OER Network.
Ongoing connection with the participants:
We will continue to expand the mailing list and teleconferences to build the network of OER-savvy
technical staff. We will work with the participants to identify opportunities where they can train
others in OER publishing (e.g., at academic conferences near their institutions or ones they already
attend).
Assessment:
We will collect feedback at the workshop from participants. We will survey the participants at six-
month intervals over the following year to ascertain whether our workshop and support activities
are meeting their needs and are leading to increased OER production. We will also survey the
senior leadership at participating institutions in six months time to understand whether they are
receiving value from their staff members’ participation. Lastly, we will measure and report on OER
production from each institution before the workshop and at regular intervals as one indicator of
impact.
5
http://open.umich.edu/dScribe
6
http://open.umich.edu/education/med/oernetwork/guides/instructional-design-tips/2010