Technology-Enabled Learning

The role of Open Educational Resources (OER) for Learning and Teaching in the South Pacific 

The geographical layout of the South Pacific, its remoteness from major continental landmasses, together with its small economies pose direct challenges for education delivery. This blog post explores the role of open educational resources (OER) in improving education for Pacific Island countries with emphasis on the University of the South Pacific (USP).

Open Education Resources (OER) according to  (Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007) refer to teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain and have been released under an open licence that permits access, use, repurposing, reuse and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. This perspective means that education is increasingly encouraged to become a public good where resources are shared with others to improve learning and its this aspect of OER that  is novel and creative. The Open Licenses allows more flexibility in allowing for the sharing of copyrighted material and resources online for educational purpose. 

The University of the South Pacific (USP) is a regional University serving the higher education needs of twelve (12) member countries. A study by Prasad, Bartu et al (2016) in their survey examining USP faculty: teaching practices, OER awareness, OER use, participation in OEP staff development claimed that USP has yet to mainstream OER in the delivery of courses at the institutional level. The survey further revealed that 63.3% (n = 69) of the surveyed faculty use OER, while 36.7% (n = 40) don’t. It is also interesting to note that the major obstacle to the adoption of OER in learning and teaching by staff were lack of awareness of OER as well as little knowledge of how to use OER. The University of the South Pacific has alot to benefit from through wider adoption of OER to support learning and teaching both from academic and student perspective.

Source: UniSa (2021)

At the institutional level, the wider adoption of OER to support education needs to come from the institutional level where OER training and policies can be formulated to generate greater adoption of OER. USP can learn from the University of South Australia (where i studied for my Masters Degree) in how they have mainstreamed OER. UniSA has mainstreamed OER to support learning and teaching and have these resources readily available and accessible by staff with OER resources grouped in a directory according to specific disciplinary area as well powerful OER search platform to find OER resources both from within the University and also across other Universities across Australia. The drive at the institutional level for greater awareness of the benefits of OER can greatly contribute to making education more cost effective at the University of the South Pacific.

UniSA Links:https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/OER/home