The Open Education Consortium is pleased to announce the addition of four new members:
1. The University of the South Pacific (USP)
The University of the South Pacific (USP) is the premier institution of higher learning for the Pacific region, uniquely placed in a region of extraordinary physical, social and economic diversity. Established in 1968, USP is one of only two universities of its type in the world. It is jointly owned by the governments of 12 member countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Samoa. The University has campuses in all member countries. The main campus, Laucala, is in Fiji. The Alafua Campus in Samoa is where the School of Agriculture and Food Technology is situated, and the Emalus Campus in Vanuatu is the location for the School of Law.
We aim to propel use and development of OER and OEP within both the University and Small Pacific Island States. We are working towards building an OER repository to include the following learning content: full courses, courseware, content modules, open textbooks and LO; and plan to launch it in November 2016.
Harford Community College (HCC) is one of 16 community colleges in Maryland where the Governor of Maryland appoints the Board of Trustees. It is medium-sized in comparison to the other schools, offering over 70 degree and certificate programs at the associates level and enrolling just under 10,000 (7,800 FTE) credit and 15,000 continuing education students taught by nearly 400 faculty members.
Between 2007 and 2011, the College saw a 25% increase in enrollment. Since then, overall enrollment has declined steadily, but at a somewhat slow pace (generally < 4% per year), with projected declines for the next 3-4 years. However, online enrollment has continuously risen steadily, including a 6% increase over the past year. In 2014, the College saw its first balanced budget in many years, and the sources of funding are state, county, and tuition based. The online learning program was developed in the late 1990s after a long tradition of delivering distance education courses through other methods.
Harford Community College currently mounted an information campaign to educate faculty, staff, administrators, and students about the benefits of OERs. We will be gathering a committee in fall 2016 to create a strategic plan for broad implementation. Currently about 8 faculty members are using OERs or planning to during the 2016-2017 academic year.
The Darakht-e Danesh (‘knowledge tree’) Online Library is a digital collection of open educational resources (OER) for Afghanistan. It was established to enhance teacher subject-area knowledge, access and use of learning materials, and to foster more diverse teaching methodologies in order to improve learning outcomes in Afghan classrooms. The repository uses an interactive, multilingual content management system currently housing OER in 18 subjects, in the three languages taught in the Afghan public school system: Dari, Pashto and English. Users can find everything from biology experiments to social studies lesson plans to full text children’s storybooks. The DD Library harnesses technology to make learning and teaching resources more directly accessible to educators, and anyone who wants to feed their knowledge, through innovative access models reaching teachers in resource-scarce environments.
As the first OER initiative in Afghanistan, we are committed to advocating for open practices in education, as the Afghan education system evolves. We are convinced that open education provides approaches that give developing countries a hand up in expediting access to education in contexts where the stakes are particularly high, where greater access to learning represents the greatest potential for ending poverty, gaining stability, and achieving peace.
4. eVidhya.com
“There is no wealth like knowledge, and no poverty like ignorance”, Buddha.
eVidhya.com, as a web platform, will strive to give everyone access to knowledge.
Our initial target audience is people who have not had a formal education and would like to pursue courses to advance in their careers. We have partnered with the Karnataka government (India) for IT, so the content from various partners that we are sharing on evidhya is related to IT. It is our intention to expand our focus into other fields in the near future.
5. Contact North | Contact Nord
Contact North | Contact Nord partners with Ontario’s 24 public colleges, 22 public universities, 76 district school boards, and 250 literacy and basic skills and training providers to help 4 million Ontarians living in 600 small, rural, remote, Indigenous and Francophone communities access post-secondary education and training programs and courses offered and taught by these education and training providers without leaving their community.
Contact North’s student portal (www.studyonline.ca) and Student Information Hotline provide students across the province with access to information on 1,000 online programs and 18,000 online courses offered by Ontario’s public colleges and universities.
Contact North also acts as an advocate, catalyst and facilitator of innovation in online and distance learning.
6. The University of New Hampshire (UNH)
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public research university, providing comprehensive, high-quality undergraduate programs and graduate programs of distinction. UNH has a national and international agenda and holds land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant charters. From its main campus in Durham, its college in Manchester, and the UNH School of Law in Concord, UNH serves the state through continuing education, cooperative extension, cultural outreach, economic development activities and applied research.
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is committed to innovation in pedagogy and cost savings for students through the use of Open Educational Resources and Open Education practices. Through a targeted investment UNH initiated a university-wide faculty grant pilot to support and evaluate the use of OER in UNH courses. Faculty were selected to re-envision their courses by incorporating OER during the 2015-2016 academic year with the goal of lowering the cost for students while providing a high quality learning experience.
Building on the success of the 2015 UNH OER pilot and through the generous support of the University System of New Hampshire Strategic Technology fund, UNH has joined Granite State College, Keene State College, and Plymouth State University in launching a system-wide Open Education initiative.