Keynote for Open Education Practices Scotland, 19 March 2015

1. OPEN EDUCATION:
AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Laura Czerniewicz
19 March 2015
Laura.Czerniewicz@uct.ac.za/ @czernie

2. GREAT
TIMING!

3. THIS TALK
o The higher education environment
o Tensions in the system
o Digital and open content
o Piracy
o OER in Africa. Responses

4. INTRODUCTION
o Promises of great changes in higher
education

5. The future of higher
education is open
education!
David Wiley 2008
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/580

6. The Internet changed the
nature of networks by making
them more inclusive and easy
to participate in.
Manuel Castells 1996.

7. INTRODUCTION
o A complex reconfiguring post –
traditional landscape

8. conventional flexible
FORMAL
SEMI-FORMAL
NON-FORMAL
Lectures
Tutorials
Course packs
Short courses
Summer school

9. conventional flexible
FORMAL
SEMI-FORMAL
NON-FORMAL
Lectures
& tutorials
Short courses
Summer school
Blended courses Online courses
Professional development
courses
MOOC related
variants

10. CHALLENGES IN THE SYSTEM
o An austerity environment for HE
globally and locally
o Urgent local pressures
• Access, success, redress, diversity

11. SOUTH AFRICAN HE CHALLENGES
o Low participation high attrition system
o Serious divides continue
• Participation rates over 50% for white students,
13% for African students
• White students twice as likely to graduate in 5
years
• Only 5% of African youth succeed in any form of
higher education
o 1st year attrition
• 40% of 1st year students leave HE
Fisher G and Scott (2011)
Letseka, M. and Maile, S. (2008

12. CHALLENGES IN THE SYSTEM
o An unequal world
• Scotland gini coefficient 31
• USA gini coefficient 45
• South Africa gini coefficient 63

13. INEQUALITY
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/09/27/map-how-the-worlds-countries-compare-on-income-inequality-the-u-s-ranks-below-nigeria/

14. http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/earth_night.jpg
ELECTRICITY

15. http://submarine-cable-map-2013.telegeography.com/
UNDERSEA CABLES

16. TENSIONS IN THE SYSTEM
Very simply, there are two prevailing social imaginaries
about digital technologies ..
The prevailing dominant imaginary in today’s information
societies is market-led. In contrast, alternative
imaginaries are best described as ‘open’ or commons-led.
…. It is this conflict that leads to major problems for
stakeholders in deciding which policies and strategies,
or mix of policies and strategies, is most likely to
facilitate progress towards more just and equitable
information societies.

17. Shawn Carpenter CC BY-SA 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/spcbrass/4557822128

18. o Higher Education is an extremely
contested space in terms of
• Who is setting the agenda
• Who is paying and the implications of that
• What role technology is playing
o The open agenda is in danger of
being appropriated

19. o The Internet has not lead to inclusivity
• Contestation re net neutrality
o Disaggregation has not necessarily
lead to openness
• Disaggregation has provided more
opportunities for commodification of
education
o Open access is under threat

20. o Openness is being unevenly distributed
– open for access but not open for
participation
o The developing world
• continues to be regarded as a recipient and
as a market in the reconfigured landscape
o Inequities of costs in education persist
• E.g., costs of books uneven across the world

21. o Absolute prices can be higher in the
south than the north
Liang 2009

22. o Consumers in the South have to commit
significantly higher proportions of their
income to consume these books
Liang 2009

23. TENSIONS IN THE SYSTEM
o Technology
• Can enable open practices
• Can close down in new ways

24. DIGITAL CONTENT
o From products to services
• From tangible to intangible
• Customer loses control
o From ownership to access/license
o Intermediary - platforms
• Services via an intermediary
o Digital rights management constrains
online access

25. Legal
Digital
Analogue
Illegal
Textbooks
Some
photocopying
E-Textbooks
Open
Education
Resources
Photocopying
Pirate sites
File
sharing
ACCESS TO LEARNING CONTENT

26. Legal
Digital
Analogue
Illegal
Textbooks
Some
photocopying
Proprietary Online
resources
Open Education Resources
Photocopying
Pirate sites
File
sharing
ACCESS TO LEARNING CONTENT

27. Legal
Digital
Analogue
Illegal
Textbooks
Some
photocopying
Proprietary Online
resources
Open Education Resources
Photocopying
Pirate sites
File sharing
ACCESS TO LEARNING CONTENT

28. OPEN EDUCATION
o Open content
• Compares to proprietary content
o Be aware of the third option
• Piracy cultures (Castells 2012)
• An affective economy (Fleming 2012)

29. PIRACY AS A SOLUTION
A very significant proportion of the population is
building its mediation through alternative channels
of obtaining content
… the pirates are more often than not all of us
Castells and Cordoso 2012

30. PIRACY AS THE ALTERNATIVE
o Netherlands
• 10 % of all ebooks on devices were actually
paid for, most of the digital books pirated
o UK
• Up to 76 % of the 50 popular textbooks are
used by students available as free pirated e-
books
Russia
92 percent of ebook readers obtained their
books by illegally downloading the materials
http://www.havocscope.com/tag/book-piracy/

31. A CASE STUDY
Access to Learning Resources

32. SOUTH AFRICA CASE STUDY
o Access to learning resources study
• Largely first-year students
• Media Studies, Health Sciences, Law
o Survey of 1001 university students
o 6 Focus Groups
• 42 students

33. SA CASE STUDY
Percentage of online resources downloaded from sources believed to be legal

34. SA CASE STUDY
14.70%
37.02%
17.84%
16.70%
1.58%
3.16% 1.12%
1.12%
5.41%
1.35%
Acquisition of info (n 65)
Easy access (n 164)
Free (n 79)
Financial reasons (n 74)
Entertainment (n 7)
Media acquisition (n 14)
Reliable information (n 5)
Reasons for illegal resources

35. SA CASE STUDY
3.60%
16.21%
16.21%
3.60%6.75%
9.45%
12.16%
2.30%
4.96%
15.31%
9.45% 4shared.com (n 8)
Miscellaneous download sites (n 36
DC++ (nn 36)
Library.nu (n 8)
Megaupload (n 15)
Piratebay (n 21)
Torrents (n 27)
Students (n 5)
Friends (n 11)
Uncertain if source was illegal (n 34
Doesn't download illegally (n 21)
Illegal resources

36. SA CASE STUDY
Everyone has engaged in piracy
Everyone copies... I am a pirate
We don’t have much to say. Because we
all pirate

37. SA CASE STUDY
It’s about access to education: It is huge!
It just seems, morally, if anything, we should have
that stuff available
It is ridiculous [what we pay for books] when you
consider what you are paying for university

38. SA CASE STUDY
Is it unethical to want to be educated or is it unethical
to charge so much [for books]?.. To have to pay that
amount when you can't afford it?
Even though in my head I know it’s wrong, it’s just a
technical thing. Substantively speaking, it’s the right
thing to do
I am not worried about the consequences of illegal
downloading. Worried about graduating.

39. SA CASE STUDY
….plagiarism, you’re lying but I mean, copying a
textbook, you’re not trying to harm anybody… it’s
your education
With plagiarism, it’s more like, ‘this is mine’,
claiming this is your own and that’s why it’s a scarier
[than copying or downloading material]

40. These resources and tools being so expensive
makes it only accessible to a certain group of
people…everything should be open education
resources (MS)
Open access is awesome. It’s like Google
Scholar, and you can get it for free access (HS)

41. OPEN EDUCATION
exists in an extremely
contested and complex environment

42. SOME AFRICAN RESPONSES

43. OER offer possibilities for Africa as per South
America or South East Asia
“Pull" factors
• reduce time and associated costs of resource
development,
• increase currency (up-to-dateness) of materials,
• localise (language, examples) materials
“Push" factors
• contributing local knowledge that has not been
widely circulated to date due to the expense of
printed materials
• possibly producing materials more cheaply than in
the US/Europe because of lower salaries
Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, PI, ROER4D

44. Most universities and most academics in Africa
do not have the luxury to invest time and
resources into anything, simply on the basis
that it is ‘a good thing to do’ …
If the use of OER will ‘solve’ an existing
problem – e.g. lack of relevant or appropriate
materials – then it becomes a no-brainer.
Catherine Ngugi, Director, OER Africa

45. We have unique cases/data to make available as OERs
taking our interesting material to the rest of the world
By contributing with OERs, we contribute to animal
health beyond our borders
Many countries in Africa with preciously few resources
(money, expertise, staff, etc). It make perfect sense to
rather use/remix existing OERs than to produce them
ourselves
Linda VanRyneveld, Director: Teaching and Learning
Faculty of Veterinary Science, University Pretoria

46. Free online courses are not going to change
education in Africa, not because of access or
sophistication issues or even context issues… but
rather because education in Africa and South Africa is
a means to an end – the qualification helps to get you
a job which puts food on the table
Until we can get verifiable accreditation right for free
online courses I don’t think there will be much
traction – on the other hand if institutions can invest
in adapting the free online courses material and using
it as a formal offering then savings in development
and design can be allocated to other resources
Kerry de Hart, OER Coordinator, UNISA

47. Initially people seem a bit sceptical about OER because of the
gains of copyright, and thus knowledge seen as commodity. In
Africa with huge percentage of poverty and inequity, many
are not able to access knowledge because they can’t afford it.
However, I grew up in a communal African setting where
almost everything is shared. Our folklore which was narrated
with so much love and sense of duty by my grandparents and
dad were rich and impactful.
The advent of "civilization' triggered production of knowledge
in print and in a bid to make economic gain, that knowledge
was hoarded and access to knowledge was now meant for the
highest bidder.
I am enthusiastic about OER because I want to trigger a
discourse on the need to harness African culture of communal
living and sharing for OER.
Dr. Jane-Frances Agbu Head , OER-MOOC Unit, National Open University of Nigeria

48. DRIVERS FOR OPEN IN AFRICA
How different are they from elsewhere?

49. AFRICAN OPEN PROJECTS
o Respond to local and global
challenges in innovative ways

50. PUT LOCALLY CONTEXTUALISED
CONTENT ONLINE

51. ENABLE COLLABORATION

52. LINK DIFFERENT TYPES OF OPEN

53. LINK DIFFERENT TYPES OF OPEN

54. CONCLUSION
Innovation in vexation and contestation
Work together globally to
reclaim the open agenda

55. THANK YOU

56. REFERENCES
o Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, MA; Oxford,, Blackwell.
o Castells, M. C., G (2012). "Editorial Introduction to Piracy Cultures." International Journal of
Communication 6: 826–833.
o Czerniewicz, L. D., A. and J. W. Small, S. (2014). "Developing world MOOCs: A curriculum
view of the MOOC landscape." Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging
Pedagogies (JOGLTEP) 2(3).
o Fleming, D. (2012). " Poisoning the Affective Economy of RW Culture: Re-Mapping the
Agents " International Journal of Communication 6: 669–688.
o Fisher, G. and I. Scott (2011). The Role of Higher Education in Closing the Skills Gap in
South Africa’, World Bank.
o Letseka, M. and S. Maile (2008). High University drop-out rates: a threat to South Africa’s
future, HSRC.
o Liang, L. (2011). Piracy, Creativity and Infrastructure: Rethinking Access to Culture. The
global flow of information : legal, social, and cultural perspectives. R. K. Subramanian, E.
New York, New York University Press: 54 -89.
o Wiley, D. and J. Hilton (2009). "Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated
Future of Higher Education." The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance
Learning.
o
o