Localizing OER in Afghanistan: Developing a Multilingual Digital Library for Afghan Teachers

Lauryn Oates,Jamshid Hashimi

doi:10.5944/openpraxis.8.2.288

Abstract

The Darakht-e Danesh (‘knowledge tree’) Online Library is the first open educational resource (OER) initiative in Afghanistan, established to enhance teacher subject-area knowledge, access and use of learning materials, and to foster more diverse teaching methodologies in order to improve learning outcomes in Afghan classrooms. This paper describes our experience developing this local language digital library, buildings its responsiveness to our audience of users as we progressed, customizing both the interface and the resources for Afghanistan’s education environment. We innovated methods to devise relevant local content, localized usability, developed different access models to reach different populations of users, integrated impact measurement, and opted to openly license material in the library’s collection. By making digital educational content open from the first introduction of digital repositories of learning objects in Afghan languages, we have an opportunity to establish the principle of openness and to promote open practices in teacher professional development in Afghanistan. The paper aims to share lessons on how OER can be customized for multilingual, resource-scarce contexts drawing from our experience to date in Afghanistan, and seeking to contribute to the literature on localization and multilingual OER.

Highlights

In developing the Darakht-e Danesh (‘knowledge tree’) Library for Educators in Afghanistan (DD Library)1 we hypothesized that the open educational resource (OER) approach offered a potential solution to some of the education quality challenges in Afghanistan, if OER could be rendered into the languages in which teachers speak and teach, and if the technology to deliver it was localized to respond to conditions in Afghanistan
This paper describes our experience developing this local language digital library using the “software as hypothesis” (Leinonen, Purma, Poldoja & Toikkanen, 2010) conceptualization that characterized the development of the LeMill multilingual digital library
We have described our approach to localization, and the steps we have taken on our path to building a tool that would make OERs relevant to, and useful for Afghan teachers

Summary

Introduction

In developing the Darakht-e Danesh (‘knowledge tree’) Library for Educators in Afghanistan (DD Library) we hypothesized that the OER approach offered a potential solution to some of the education quality challenges in Afghanistan, if OER could be rendered into the languages in which teachers speak and teach, and if the technology to deliver it was localized to respond to conditions in Afghanistan. This paper describes our experience developing this local language digital library using the “software as hypothesis” (Leinonen, Purma, Poldoja & Toikkanen, 2010) conceptualization that characterized the development of the LeMill multilingual digital library. This approach allowed for the continual development of an OER collection and the initiation of a community of practice among teachers using the OER by using the architecture of the digital library to lead teachers to use it in a way that will enable meaningful use of the system.

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion