Open licensing

The African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and NBA developed a short online course for African librarians and library staff, based on the findings of a survey conducted in 2021. The main course objectives were to:

The Impact of Open Licensing on the Early Reader Ecosystem examines how to use open licensing to promote quality learning resources for young children that are relevant and interesting.

The policy paper notes that open educational resources have worked well as complements to textbooks and commercial content, but the experience of the past decade — with free content on the Internet aiming to replace publisher-created textbooks— has demonstrated that it is difficult to maintain the quality, efficacy and sustainability necessary for good education.

Openly licensed resources are ‘free’ to access, but there can be significant user, creation, adaptation, and production costs. The long-term sustainability of African publishing in local languages requires that these costs be met fairly and completely, using models that will encourage people to establish, grow, and sustain excellent content creation organizations.

This paper examines the concept of OER in more detail, offering a simple, clear definition, explaining the economic and educational potential behind that definition, introducing examples of OER practices around the world, exploring legal considerations, and highlighting some of the challenges to releasing the transformative potential of OER.

This study was conducted as part of the OER for Skills Development project of Commonwealth of Learning (COL), supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The objective of the study was to collect baseline data from Commonwealth institutions with respect to the development, use and reuse of OER; the availability of support; and challenges faced in fostering the use of OER.

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a powerful means of expanding the reach and the effectiveness of education worldwide. For this reason, COL and UNESCO co-organised the World OER Congress in 2012 in Paris, which resulted in the OER Paris Declaration: a statement urging governments around the world to release, as OER, all teaching, learning and research materials developed with public funds.

A Creative Commons guide on how to share resources and creativity, but also maintain a sustainable organization.

This presentation was created for the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) workshop in Nairobi on National Book and Reading Policies for Africa from 17th to 19th June 2019. The presentation addresses issues related to the cost of storybook creation and adaptation of storybooks. 

This study explores the status of the creation, use, and management of open education resources (OER) in Kenya. OER, which to a large extent depend on access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), are seen by proponents as a way to improve access to and quality of education.