OER for Development

Karen, Brendan and I are submitting a presentation proposal to the OpenCourseWare Consortium meeting in Cambridge in May 2011.  Here’s our OER story: 

From open courses to open research: OCW impact at Michigan State University

MSU is demonstrating the impact of OCW and OER around the world as an integral part of on-the-ground solutions for  international development in agriculture and food security. The impact spans the public and private sectors involved in capacity building, training, and applying scientific research in developing countries.  The Food Safety Knowledge Network   (and http://fskntraining.com/) is building capacity among food suppliers in developing countries to improve their food safety practices and prepare for full-fledged certification. AgShare is facilitating new practices in teaching, learning and research that bridge the gaps in agriculture curriculum in Africa. We are now applying this experience in the State of Michigan to support research collaboration and information sharing among faculty, students and community stakeholders.

MSU was among the first U.S. land-grant universities to join the OpenCourseWare Consortium .  Our first ten open courses included online non-credit programs in land policy and equine management.  From this beginning, we took the OpenCourseWare model and applied it to food safety to rapidly create, localize, and implement critical food safety training in developing countries.  MSU created the Food Safety Knowledge Network with an association of 500 global food companies and funding from the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and USAID. Using the initial set of open materials, several companies and international development agencies offered basic training to suppliers and measured an increase in knowledge through training featuring the open resources. OER materials using a Creative Commons license requiring attribution and sharing have resulted in training materials now available in five different languages beyond English. FSKN is growing and includes full courses and disaggregated resources organized by food safety competencies.  A unique technical approach allows users to search resources through both expert competencies and through open indexing of resources.

In 2009, we created AgShare with our partners OER Africa and four African Universities in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. AgShare is currently in pilot mode, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Shared innovative practices are emerging , not only for creating and sharing OER, but also for collaborating with stakeholders and with students to bridge the gap between theory and local practice in African university agriculture curriculum. AgShare also involves finding and advocating for open resources in agriculture which can be shared and customized by users. AgShare includes training for faculty but also sees students, farmers and community partners developing open content. Technical work supports improvements in the Creative Commons DiscoverEd so that open resources are more easily searched and found making re-use more common.  AgShare is having a promising impact on curriculum innovation, faculty practice, student research, and agriculture organizations.

Building on this experience, today MSU is beginning work with its university partners in Michigan’s University Research Corridor to apply OCW and OER practices to research through open knowledge. Our pilot effort focuses on supporting the collaborations of the environmental health sciences faculty working groups across MSU, University of Michigan and Wayne State University.

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