March 9-13 marked Open Education Week globally. Here at UCT, few people on campus seemed to know about it. The special function organized by the OER team attracted only 25 people on the day despite T-shirts to celebrate the occasion and many platters of delicious food. This poor uptake resonates with recent research in the US. Survey findings in the
2015 New Media Horizon report indicates that only 5.1% of respondents in Higher Education institutions were “very aware” of OER.
Why aren’t more educators drawn to these events to hear more about what opening education can do for them and their students? Perhaps we need to explore this further. Even our seminar on the 23rd attracted only a few interested participants.
Here Dr Juan Klopper explains what led him to become a champion of OER. He has now published over 1000 videos on his YouTube channel and is planning to launch one of the seven UCT Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) later this year.
