OER Courseware, Research and Policies

Governments across the world are increasing the openness and transparency of their services, a move also taking place in the education sector in some countries, signifying commitment to openness and ensuring that adequate attention and funding is paid to open educational resources (OER). This chapter assesses the extent to which policies are being developed and/or modified to support effective use of open educational resources. However, despite the growth of OER at many institutions, surprisingly few have developed and implemented formal OER policies.

This policy reaffirms the engagements that government, through the Ministry of Education and its public and private partners at national and international levels, share to ensure that young people in the Seychelles have improved access to affordable opportunities presented by the information age, to better assist them in acquiring important ICT-related competencies for personal and national development.

In the last decade, a number of OER initiatives in African higher education have sought to address challenges related to the access, supply and contextualisation of educational materials. However, limited information is available on the effectiveness of such initiatives. To gain deeper insight into this, OER Africa conducted research between September 2019 and February 2022. The project analysed the effectiveness of eleven key African OER initiatives in higher education and their influence on developing and supporting effective OER practices.