Open Educational Resources Adaptation Research Articles

Trust in Materials: Library Workers’ Adoption and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources

Trust in Materials: Library Workers’ Adoption and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources

Bridging the Divide: Indigenous Language Integration in Open Educational Resource Accessibility

The use of information resources is dependent on their accessibility by users. The accessibility of information has attracted the attention of researchers from different parts of the world. However, Open Educational Resources (OERs) accessibility issues have not been adequately addressed in South Africa. This article explores the use of indigenous languages in the development and adaptation of OERs for accessibility at the University of South Africa. A total of 108 OERs were available for selection on UnisaIR. Ten of the 108 OERs were purposefully selected. Exploring and analysing OER development at Unisa took a qualitative and exploratory approach. This article presents the findings of a thematic analysis that was used to identify dominant themes in OER. The findings highlight two main concerns that underpin OER operations at Unisa: 1) translation as a method of OER creation and/or adaptation; and 2) deficiency of OER creation in indigenous languages. Though using indigenous languages in the construction of OERs can help to address the accessibility gap in the supply of teaching and learning resources, this aspect of accessibility as a discourse in the OER space has yet to be explored extensively. It is a matter of concern that many OERs at Unisa are written only in English. To address the gap in accessibility of OERs in the South African context, the following three language-related factors should support the creation of OERs: development in local languages, linguistic pluralism, and translation into indigenous languages.

Automatic Adaptation of Open Educational Resources: An Approach From a Multilevel Methodology Based on Students’ Preferences, Educational Special Needs, Artificial Intelligence and Accessibility Metadata

The need for adaptive e-learning environments that respond to learning variability is now a fundamental requirement in education, as it helps to ensure that students learn and pass their courses within a set time frame. Although guidelines, techniques and methods have been established in recent years to contribute to the development of accessible and adaptable e-learning environments that promote digital inclusion, their implementation is challenging due to the lack of knowledge of an adequate way to do it and because it is considered more of a technological competence for scholars in the area. In this context, automated support for adapting material that responds to the correct use of accessibility metadata not only provides a way to improve the description of adapted educational resources, but also facilitates their search according to the needs and preferences of students, particularly those with disabilities. In this article, we carry out a multilevel methodological proposal for the automatic adaptation of open educational resources, in order to provide a tool that contributes to the accessibility and correct use of their metadata in e-learning environments. A research is conducted with students with disabilities to establish their real needs and preferences, highlighting the need to strengthen the adequate description and coherent alternative text in images, the correct subtitling in videos and the conversion of audio to text, data that are relevant to our proposal. The research conducted aims to contribute with an automated support tool in the generation of accessible educational resources that are correctly labeled for search and reuse. This research also aims to support researchers in artificial intelligence applications to address challenges and opportunities in the field of virtual education, in addition to providing an overview that could help those who generate educational resources and maintain their interest in making them accessible.

Open Pedagogy

Open pedagogy is a set of teaching practices built on the foundation of the open education community’s shared values, including but not limited to student agency, sharing, diversity and inclusion, peer learning, renewable assignments, co-creation/collaboration, and active/experiential learning. Though there is a lack of consensus around the definition of open pedagogy, it most often refers to student involvement in the development of course content in the form of renewable assignments or the creation or adaptation of open educational resources (OER). The practice of open pedagogy may result in or overlap with OER-enabled pedagogy and open educational practices.

How Korean Language Arts Teachers Adopt and Adapt Open Educational Resources: A Study of Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives

<p class="3">Since 2005, open educational resources (OER) have played a key role in K-12 education in South Korea; so far, however, there has been little discussion about OER efficacy in South Korean K-12 education. In the meantime, South Korean education has been attracting a lot of interest around the world. Former U.S. President Obama’s comments about South Korean education might also be caused by South Korean students’ academic performance evaluated by international large-scale assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). This article uses an ethnographic perspective to explore the experiences of teachers and students in the Korean context. The analysis of the findings shows how teachers adopt and adapt OER for their 12<sup>th</sup> grade (the final year of secondary school) Korean language arts classes. Through classroom observations, interviews, and questionnaires, this exploration revealed that nearly 92% of the students perceived OER as beneficial to their studies and that teachers were spurred on to orchestrate differentiated instructional plans by OER. We argue that there is significant value to using OER in the formal educational curriculum, but that a lack of knowledge of how to adapt OER restricts how their potential is realized in practice. We identify implications for maximizing OER adaptation and successful usage of OER in K-12 education.</p>

Postgraduate students as OER capacitators

A comprehensive theoretical, legal and practical basis for OER has been developed over the past fifteen years, supported by the expansion of open source curation platforms and the work of advocacy groups and international bodies. OER’s potential has been sufficiently documented; the question remains how best to support, integrate and normalise OER activity within the academic community in a sustainable fashion. This paper draws on the experiences of the Vice Chancellor’s Open Educational Resources Adaptation project in the University of Cape Town, which explored whether postgraduate students, with their blend of developing subject knowledge, greater time resources, and experience of teaching artefacts from both a learner’s and educator’s perspective, may be a valuable resource for lecturers or institutions eager to engage in OER but lacking the requisite support structures. It was found that postgraduates were best employed as capacitating agents, focusing on the non-pedagogical elements of OER adaptation.

‘It's Not Their Job to Share Content’: A Case Study of the Role of Senior Students in Adapting Teaching Materials as Open Educational Resources at the University of Cape Town

Inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's landmark decision to make its teaching and learning materials freely available to the public as OpenCourseWare (OCW), many other higher education institutions have followed suit sharing resources now more generally referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER). The University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa joined the OER movement with the launch of the UCT OpenContent directory in February 2010. While much of the research has focused on the potential value of OER to institutions and to the community at large, less attention has been paid to the complex processes that need to be undertaken to adapt existing materials as OER and specifically the opportunity to engage senior students in this practice. In this article the authors explore the processes that three senior physics students employed in assisting their lecturers to adapt existing materials as OER, the challenges they encountered and the contribution these students made. The findings reveal that the senior physics students report having sufficient time, knowledge of the field and skill in using a range of technological tools that made the OER adaptation process of their lecturers' materials easier. Based on the participating physics lecturers' acceptance of the students' adaptations of their materials, it would seem that the strategy of using senior students to support busy lecturers to adapt existing teaching materials as OER is worth considering.

OER Adaptation and Reuse across cultural contexts in Sub Saharan Africa: Lessons from TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa)

Over a period of three years a number of International and African based institutions collaborated to design and create a set of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support school based teacher education as part of the TESSA project. Writing of the materials drew on case studies, experiences and existing resources from across the region using a highly structured template. These TESSA OERs were then adapted to be appropriate for each user setting and practices. It is this process - supporting the user community to harness and integrate OERs for their own systems and cultures, which is the focus of this article. The authors draw on a range of data to make explicit the kinds of knowledge, skills and support employed in the adaptation process and in particular the role of the structured template in supporting this process, and the problems encountered. The article suggests that OERs will only fulfil their promise if more attention is accorded to issues of user access and skills as well as the form of the OERs, their purpose and underlying pedagogy. Finally the paper offers suggestions for guidance to support other users in adapting OERs for their own context whilst maintaining the quality of the OERs and working towards self-sustaining communities of users.