About

The objectives of the AVU OER strategy are to:

• Facilitate increased participation in the creation, organization, dissemination and utilization of OERs
• Address issues pertaining to relevance of OERs to the African Context
• Reduce technological challenges
• Enable institutions to participate actively, by driving and owning the process in terms of form, content, structure and orientation

The availability of quality and contextualized academic content constitutes one of the major barriers to accessing quality education in Africa.

In 2005, the AVU started addressing the issue of academic content through a Multinational project funded by the African Development Bank and partially by the United Nations Development Program-Somalia. A component of the Multinational project was related to the development of a continental Teacher Education program in Mathematics, Sciences and ICT basic skills.

The AVU has completed the development of four (4) full Bachelors of Education in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. The programs were developed using a collaborative approach. A total of 12 universities, 146 authors and peer reviewers from 10 countries in Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries were fully involved in the process. The AVU has developed 73 modules as follow: 46 Math and Sciences, 4 ICT Basic Skills, 19 Teacher Education professional courses and 4 related to the integration of ICTs in Education and integration in respective subject areas.

A decision was made in 2006 to release the 73 modules as Open Education Resources in order to make the developed courses freely available for all.

It has therefore been useful to build an online interactive repository to support the AVU OER Strategy. The portal will contribute to increase the number of Africans that will use, contextualize, share and disseminate the existing as well as future academic content developed by the AVU.

In line with the AVU Business Plan 2009-2014, the AVU started developing the OER Repository in the first quarter of 2010. OER@AVU will serve as a platform where the 73 modules of ICT Integration in Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Education, ICT Basic Skills and B.Ed. professional courses that were developed and released as OERs through the AVU Multinational Teacher Education Program will be published. The AVU OER Repository will also serve as a platform for educators to use, modify and contribute to AVU collection, make their educational resources available to others, discuss and comment on them, and collaborate in developing them further. It will host all of the AVU's upcoming open educational resources in areas such as Business Studies, Computer Sciences, Agriculture and Environmental studies. The new AVU OER Repository, OER@AVU, is funded by the African Development Bank.

The AVU OER Repository is developed using open source software platforms and technologies, including Linux, DSpace and PostgreSQL.

The objectives of the AVU OER Repository are to:

1. Enhance the utilization of the 73 modules developed under the AVU Multinational Project, consequently increasing the impact of the project beyond its implementation life
2. Facilitate accessing, using, adapting, and sharing of AVU Open Education Resources
3. Contribute to dissemination of African tertiary educational content in the World Wide Web and provide links to other tertiary educational content on the web
4. Build synergies between the AVU OER portal and other OER bodies such as OCW, MIT-LINC and MERLOT

ABOUT AVU

The African Virtual University (AVU) is a Pan African Intergovernmental Organization established by charter with the mandate of significantly increasing access to quality higher education and training through the innovative use of information communication technologies.

Five African Governments, Kenya, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and Cote d'Ivoire signed a Charter establishing the AVU as an Intergovernmental Organization. The AVU has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya and a Regional office in Dakar Senegal. The AVU has Host Country Agreements with the governments of Kenya and Senegal and the AVU has diplomatic status in these countries.

More About AVU: http://www.avu.org/About-AVU/introduction.html