Advancing social justice through small grants for the development of open educational resources at the University of Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology

Abstract

The Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) draft Open Learning Policy Framework (OLPF) for Post-School Education and Training (PSET) situates the creation and sharing of open educational resources (OER) at the heart of the open learning agenda. The OLFP suggests a range of diverse funding strategies to support the development of OER in the PSET sector. This study aims to explore the use of one funding strategy, namely small OER grants, at two higher education institutions in South Africa. This case study employs a qualitative research methodology, and interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of OER grant managers and grant recipients (lecturers and support staff) at the University of Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in order to highlight how these small-scale OER grants have supported the development of OER at their respective institutions. Moving from the premise that DHET’s conception of open learning has a social justice intent, the study uses Nancy Fraser’s (2005) theory of social justice, which includes the economic, cultural, and political dimensions of social justice, to appraise in what ways, if at all, these funding initiatives may be contributing to socially just education. This study found that economic support in the form of small grants alleviated OER development costs, although, in some instances, the funds did not cover the full costs of development. The creation of OER enabled a degree of cultural recognition of marginalized groups through the translation and production of locally contextualised resources. From the standpoint of political representation, most grant recipients collaborated with students and thus, to some extent, incorporated the student voice into the creation of resources. The study is important in that it provides recommendations on how DHET could provide relatively modest, targeted resourcing to support OER development projects so that these resources can be re-used by other institutions or as individual learners.