Open textbooks in South African higher education
Research by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at UCT indicates that in many instances students are choosing to forego purchasing of textbooks, thereby jeopardising learning outcomes – not only because they are unaffordable, but also because they are deemed unfit for context, or because courses make use of only a fraction of the overall content. The two-page paper is a call for national support and coordination in order to grow and develop an open textbook community of practice, in addition to current institutional efforts.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Willmers, Michelle, Cox, Glenda, Masuku, Bianca
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Langage : Anglais
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Open textbook landscape survey report: University of Cape Town
This landscape survey utilised a desktop review approach combined with selective consultation with key partners, colleagues who were open education advocates, and practitioners, in order to produce a comprehensive list of open textbooks published at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The study reveals a minimum of 39 open textbooks were published by UCT authors in the period 2010–2021, and that there was uneven distribution of open textbook output across different faculties. As well, numerous (21 of 39) of UCT open textbooks were hosted on more than one platform, with OpenUCT and the UCT Libraries Continental Platform being the primary host environments.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca
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Langage : Anglais
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Michael Held's open textbook journey
Through the work of Learning Innovation through Orthopaedic Networks (LION), Dr. Held aims to provide an interactive educational platform for medical students and primary care providers in Southern Africa. His grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) supports development of the Orthopaedics for Primary Health Care open textbook. There is a severe lack of African learning materials which are tailored to local pathology and circumstances, and written by local experts. All content in the Orthopaedics for Primary Health Care collection is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Maria Keet’s open textbook journey
This case study draws from the experience of Associate Professor Maria Keet (Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town/UCT, 2018) who wrote the first textbook in the new subfield of ontological engineering, “An Introduction to Ontology Engineering.” The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project is a research, advocacy and implementation initiative based in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at UCT. Aimed at Honours and early postgraduate students, the work identifies and demarcates ontology engineering; introduces its essential components; provides explainers, summaries of scientific papers, as well as interactive exercises.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Digital open textbooks for development
The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project is a research, implementation and advocacy initiative at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. Findings show compelling evidence to suggest that open textbook development processes could address social injustice in higher education. Findings also demonstrate the efficacy of grant mechanisms to stimulate open textbook creation and reuse, and the need to scale activity to national levels in order to boost South African open textbook development that supports social justice efforts. The role of open educational tools and practices in education has been amplified in the COVID-19 context.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Cox, Glenda, Willmers, Michelle, Masuku, Bianca
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Langage : Anglais
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Stella Papanicolaou’s open textbook journey
The Open Textbook Journeys series tells about open textbook initiatives, teaching and publishing processes, and what inspires teachers to do the work of open textbook production. This case study draws on: Stella Papanicolaou’s grant proposal to the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project; her grant report; interviews (x2) with Stella; field notes of the DOT4D Publishing and Implementation Manager. The ambitious project made it possible for her to work collaboratively with students and the project team, and to experiment with ideas towards decoloniality in concrete terms rather than purely in theory.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Digital open textbooks for development : interview 1 of 2 (2019)
This interview schedule was developed in 2019 by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town as part of its open textbook research process. The interview examines authors’ motivations for developing open textbooks, their envisioned content development plans in terms of authorship approach and student involvement, as well as approaches towards publishing, quality assurance, sustainability, copyright and licensing.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Cox, Glenda, Willmers, Michelle, Masuku, Bianca
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Langage : Anglais
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Kensleyrao Apajee’s open textbook journey
Students of first-year Engineering Drawing (ED) in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town (UCT, 2017-2018) were forced to choose between buying an expensive and (perhaps) ill-suited textbook or ignoring it at their peril. Through the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project, head tutor, Kensleyrao Apajee set his mind to creating an alternative in the form of an open textbook. The Open Textbook Journeys series tells about open textbook initiatives, teaching and publishing processes, and what inspires people to do the work of open textbook production.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Digital open textbooks for development : interview 2 of 2 (2019)
This interview schedule was developed by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town (2019) as part of its open textbook research process. The interview explores authors’ goals in terms of their envisioned open textbook development initiatives; the injustices related to race, gender and culture that occur within classroom contexts; the different ways to address these injustices, their conceptions of curriculum transformation and decolonisation; and as well, the manner in which they situate open textbook production work in relation to broader global power dynamics and epistemic positioning.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Cox, Glenda, Willmers, Michelle, Masuku, Bianca
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Langage : Anglais
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Claire Blackman’s open textbook journey
Claire Blackman’s Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) story is heavily shaped by the parameters of the project lifecycle. The challenges of production and time limitations are key facets of this case study. To many of Claire’s students, the high price of their algebra course textbook was unaffordable. As teaching of tertiary mathematics emphasizes helping students develop necessary thinking skills, Claire was hopeful her textbook would be useful beyond South Africa. Features of PreTeXt open-source XML means easy inclusion of runable code within HTM. This enables students to check answers online and interact with the textbook.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Abimbola Windapo’s open textbook journey
This paper provides insight into content development, open licensing, and other processes involved in open educational resources. After years of refining her course notes Professor Windapo published online, “Fundamentals of Construction Management.” This case study discusses the open textbook journey that Abimbola Windapo embarked on with Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) to make her textbook accessible to students and educators, as well as to industry professionals. Windapo chose to publish with an external commercial publisher because of its open access approach, which allows students to use its textbooks for free.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Juan Klopper’s open textbook journey
By developing content using various formats and methods, Juan Klopper has explored the use of online platforms and social media for broadening access to knowledge, particularly as it relates to health care in South Africa. In February 2019, Juan received a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project to support the development of The Open Surgery Textbook, openly licensed and freely accessible online. Juan believed that the tiered and equal-partner design of the open textbook had the benefit of built-in quality assurance. However, he was unable to finish the project within DOT4D time constraints.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Jonathan Shock’s open textbook journey
Jonathan Shock was awarded a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project to develop a series of chapters for a first-year mathematics textbook “Introduction to University Level Mathematics for a South African Audience.” The first of these chapters, ‘Introduction to Complex Numbers’ (co-authored with Mashudu Mokhithi), was published in the OpenUCT repository in 2020.
The aim was to develop an open access book at the University of Cape Town (UCT) which would be multiformat (online and print), inclusive (culturally and linguistically), and tailored for the South African school leaver. The paper provides details of this successful project.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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James Lappeman’s open textbook journey
James and his colleague Paul Egan received a grant from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project in order to undertake production and publication of the “Marketing to South African Consumers” open textbook. This paper details content development and design, and workflow of the project. In addition to having the textbook openly available online in multiple formats to boost accessibility, the author felt it was also important to have a print version. The final, published Marketing to South African Consumers textbook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence and priced very affordably.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Tim Low’s open textbook journey
Tim Low’s Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) grant enabled him to start translating the first-year IntroStat textbook from English into isiXhosa. As a senior lecturer at University of Cape Town, Tim advocates for greater inclusivity, localisation and multilingualism in the teaching of statistics at UCT. Enthusiasm for the project was sustained during 2019. However, activity during the normal academic term was not sustainable in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic adding to unpredictability. Two chapters were translated into isiXhosa and licensed in line with the ShareAlike principle. As the original English resource carries an open licence, no copyright issues were encountered.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle, Trotter, Henry, Cox, Glenda
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Langage : Anglais
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Open textbooks and social justice : open educational practices to address economic, cultural and political injustice at the university of Cape Town
Findings demonstrate that open textbooks have the potential to disrupt histories of exclusion by addressing issues of cost and marginalisation through the creation of affordable, contextually-relevant learning resources. This paper provides evidence from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town (UCT) on the potential of open textbooks to address social injustice in South African higher education. Greater equity in access relates to epistemic marginalisation, embodied in the predominance of expensive textbooks authored in the Global North, often unaffordable for many students and which do not represent local realities.
Auteur ou autrice(s) : Cox, Glenda, Masuku, Bianca, Willmers, Michelle
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Langage : Anglais
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