These are notes from small group discussions about institutional policy for OER from day 3 of the Health OER Tech Africa 2012 workshop. This document is CC BY SA licensed.

1. Small Group Discussion: Institutional Enabling Policies for OER
Group notes from the Health OER Tech Africa October 2012 conference. These notes are shared
under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License.
Participants include: Emmanuel Kusi Achampong, Enoch Allotey, Rosemond Aryeetey, Yetemwork Benti,
Gregory Doyle, Wisdom Dzikunu, Ted Hanss, Moro Ismaila, Roman Kanobana, Prince Kpasra, Patrick
Kuti, Saeed Majeed, John Marfo, Fundile Nkunge, Nyemitei Odjidja, Tom Olewe, Kathleen Omollo,
Benjamin Prempeh, Adam Rahman, Nicole Southgate, Monge Tlaka, Chris Yebuah
Seeds for discussion
 Why have an institutional policy?
 What considerations (e.g. legal issues) should go into a policy? How much detail
should be included in written policy?
 What are the challenges in moving from a paper policy to an operationalized
policy?
Group 1
Policy Challenges
• Not all institution gets funding and support to create and publish OER and/or policy. This also
poses its own sets of issues.
• Ensure that the development and release of OER is not dependent/linked to external funding or
individual. This must be seen as part of the faculty/college. Ensure it is university wide
policy/initiative and not college based /people based
• Involving all departments /faculty for their buy-in early on in the process
• It is important to get buy in of the ICT faculty/directorate – development of infrastructure and
support
• Alleviate people’s concerns about OER and copyright implications.
• Ensure staff time is made available to attend workshops/training.
• Get buy in of the ICT faculty/directorate – development of infrastructure
Implementation of Policy
• Different approaches differs from university to university and each approach has its own
challenges
• Some institutions start with creating policy and
• Some start with using OER and incorporating into their
• Advocacy and sensitization - understand what OER is, benefits and value proposition
• Identify champions and key individuals to drive initiative/policy/OER
• Encourage faculty to Find, Use and Create and Publish. Some are already using OER but might
not know it.
• Approach to sensitization (not too pushy/authoritative but encouraging and supportive)
• Show how others have done it (sustainability – case studies)
• Encourage peer review, involvement and sharing
• Include issues of OER development, policy, remuneration system in the academic orientation for
new staff
• Include the use of OER and in workshops/internal university publicity – use internally (other
staff/student) capacity where possibility
• Workshops on material development (tools/software, processes etc.)
• As developing resources is one of the requirements for academic/lecture responsibility, lecturers
should be encouraged to create resources and update teaching and learning resources on a
regular basis and should take into account (copyright issues)
• Ensure that Department/Faculty heads or Deans includes budget for creating, updating and
publishing of resources for sharing.
1

2. Small Group Discussion: Institutional Enabling Policies for OER
2

3. Small Group Discussion: Institutional Enabling Policies for OER
Group 2
Reasons for having a Policy
• Mainly to ensure consistency, uniformity and continuity of OER material production and sharing.
• To commit the institution and faculty to produce and use OER material
• To agree to adopt a uniform license system for the production of OER
• To facilitate shared responsibilities: stakeholders to know what their role is and what is expected
of them
• To ensure quality control and review – it sets the goals, limitations and serves as a reference.
Factors contributing to gap between Policy on paper and Implementation
• Lack of publicity/awareness of the policy among stakeholders.
• Interpretation of the policy (which is a legal document) by stakeholders
• Flexibility of involvement – personal indifference to the policy because one may not have been
involved in the development of the policy.
• Unachievable goals set in the policy document – e.g. regarding the availability of resources and
what is required to implement the policy document.
Consideration/Topics for Policy formulation
• Proper research must be conducted before preparing policy documents
• Experts should be brought on board to produce good analysis of what is required
• Comprehensive research into licensing to correctly apportion appropriate licensing to contents
• Clear reward system for all stakeholders – should be detailed clearly in the policy document
• Content provider must ensure that the materials are properly copyrighted
Group 3
http://www.slideshare.net/kludewig/oer-policy-small-group-discussion
Large Group Discussion
 Example country-level policies in place or in discussion
• Poland
• Brazil
• South Africa
• USA (Department of Education, Department of Labor, National Institutes of Health; also by
default documents created by the federal government are in the public domain with no copyright
reserved)
 Example state or province-level policies
• Within USA, California, Utah, and Florida have open-friendly policies.
3