Education is a fundamental human right, yet one fifth of the world’s population lives with poor literacy. India is home to the largest number of illiterate people, with infrastructural, cultural, and socio-economic factors hindering equitable access to quality education. Due to the rapidly growing technology and Internet usage in the country, open educational resources (OER) are increasingly being used as a vital tool to help transcend barriers to child literacy, also aiding in educational attainment. While an array of scholarly works provides evidence of the potential in OER to influence higher education outcomes in developing nations, academic analysis of their impact on primary level education attainment has been minimal. This paper retrieve lessons from three children’s content providing organizations to understand the opportunities and challenges of OER in primary-level education in developing nations with similar cultural, infrastructural, and socio-economic issues. While the findings of this study suggest that the use of OER allows for greater distribution and scale across different cultural and linguistic settings, particularly in rural and remote regions, they also warn against the adaptation and pedagogical barriers of OER into societies where traditional modes of education are established and trusted.
Sustainability is a fundamental requirement to ensure long-term viability of open educational resource (OER) initiatives. To afford technology upgrades and author costs, most of the existing initiatives are heavily reliant on continued funding; limiting OER models to invest in commissioned works. User-generated resources come as a solution to this problem, although a fairly novel concept to the area of child literacy. Consequently, there is little evidence available in earlier literature on their use for education. With online platforms such as social media and gaming sites encouraging users to collaborate and create original content, user-generation is a potential instrument for circumventing costs and achieving rapid dissemination of works. However, it also presents a significant downside – questionable quality. This paper discusses the use of user-created OERs for literacy, exploring the quality and sustainability implications that arise from this creation method and the measures undertaken by an Indian organization to overcome the same.
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) appears to be vital for the sustenance of our present society. Not only do they seem to protect the original works of the creators but also help in fighting infringement, a major problem in today's world. But do we really need to fear the use of our works by others? Is it right to consider knowledge as a commodity and seek recognition for it? Ancient Indian scriptures appear to suggest that people of the Indian sub-continent did not uphold the concept of ownership of knowledge and believed that knowledge was to be passed down without reservations: following the parampara (tradition) of the Guru (the erudite teacher) and Sishya (disciple). This article is an effort to understand the views and values of the present and past that appear consistently divergent. In this paper, we also recognise the growing initiatives that call for knowledge to be freely shared through means of open licensing. In fact, these initiatives across the world are indicative of a rising movement with high potential for change in people's perspectives for a better world where knowledge is free. This paper in this context is our humble attempt to reconnect with the values of the past.
This research aims to identify how open educational resources (OERs) can contribute towards primary education, and what role they might play in increasing childhood literacy in particular, which has been identified as a prime component in ensuring educational attainment in primary school. Literature in the area largely addresses OERs and their potential to widen participation in tertiary education with a focus on developed nations, with little discussion about how OERs can be utilized in primary education. This thesis is particularly interested in the role OERs might play in primary education in developing nations where a range of challenges contribute to the low levels of literacy. In nations like India and South Africa, which are the locations of the case study organizations selected for this research, decentralized rural populations, combined with high levels of poverty, child labor and low levels of literacy and awareness cause poor attendance and access to schools. This research suggests that OERs aimed at developing literacy in primary school-aged children can overcome the distribution and access issues that contribute to low attendance and engagement with education in these nations. OERs have the capacity to bypass low levels of educational infrastructure by distributing high quality resources online in low definition formats suitable for downloading and under open licenses on platforms suitable for users to repackage, translate and re-purpose according to their particular need or audience. While there are a range of sustainability challenges for organizations with a social mission to use OERs to increase the equity and access of educational materials, these organizations have found innovative solutions taken from other online successes such as gaming and social media. Making use of volunteers and users in a community of practice to ensure that content is translated, quality is maintained and there is volume on their sites has some risks but also enables the maintenance of an open repository of materials for use, re-use, adaptation and sharing. This thesis contributes to the existing literature by shedding light into understanding these challenges from the experiences and perspectives of three case study organizations that provide OERs for children.
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