Overview

The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) is a network of small countries that are committed to the collaborative development of free content resources for use in an educational context. Small states represent 32 of the 54 member countries of the commonwealth and, although there are significant variations among them, many experience similar challenges regarding access to high-quality post-secondary education. In response to this challenge, VUSSC was launched by commonwealth Ministers for Education at a conference in Halifax, Canada in 2000.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) is South Africa’s oldest university and one of Africa’s leading teaching and research institutions. The university has a long history of involvement in open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEPs). UCT has spearheaded several open education projects, including OER UCT and the Health OER Project. The University is a member of the Open Education Consortium, an international consortium with approximately 300 universities that make their teaching materials openly available for sharing. This case study examines four of the institution’s key OER initiatives: the OpenUCT Initiative (2011–2014); Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) (2021–2017); the UCT Vice Chancellor’s OER Adaptation Project (2013–2016); and Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) (2018–2021). Each has been selected because of its focus and influence on OER advocacy, practice, and policy for Africa academics.

The Open University of Tanzania (OUT) is an open and distance learning (ODL) institution, operating through a network of 30 regional centres and ten coordinating centres spread throughout the United Republic of Tanzania and beyond the country borders to other parts of Africa. OUT has engaged in several open educational resources (OER) initiatives, starting from 2008 when it began working with OER Africa.
OER Africa collaborated with the OUT management team, the OUT Institute of Educational and Management Technologies (IEMT), and the OUT Library to implement the activities of the Institutionalization of OER Practices Project. The project was framed by a Participatory Action Research approach designed to share and disseminate the project outcomes.