Open Learning Network

  by  Karen Cropper 

Name

Anuradha Gungadeen

Project Title

Sustainable and effective use of open educational resources (OER) in existing primary curriculum with a view to enable technology enhanced pedagogy and community of practice through wiring schools

Project Summary

The purpose of this project was to enable teachers upgrade their skills in manipulating open educational software and in infusing identified technological tools in developing OER.

The main reason for her visit was experience what goes on at the Open University as far as OER activities are concerned. She uses the analogy of the OU being a factory and her wanting to discover how OER are manufactured and the entire process that goes on within the factory. She was interested in deepening her knowledge in development of re-usable open and distance open learning resources and the impact of digital media on learning. Hence she used her visit to learn from experts in OLnet, TESSA, SCORE and Knowledge Media Institute (KMI) what they were using, developing and researching in open source software and digital media in the creation of OER. Ultimately, this helped her refine her research ideas and focus her project. She enjoyed access to OU facilities such as the library and the Institute of Educational Technology (IET)’s Super Pod.

Dates visited the UK

24 January to 4 February 2011

Institution

Mauritius Institute of Education (MIE), Mauritius

Biographical information

Anuradha is a lecturer at the Centre for Open and Distance learning, School of Education at MIE. She has an interest in educational technology and is current pursuing a PhD in this field. She also has a Masters degree in Computer Mediated Communication and Pedagogies, and an additional qualification in managing and facilitating online instruction offered jointly by the University of West Indies and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL).

Her involvement in OER started about eight years ago when she worked at the Virtual centre for Innovative Learning Technologies at University of Mauritius. Then she became involved with the COL’s project called The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) and learnt about OER and the open education software. Her encounter with the TESSA project was accidental, her then head of the centre had asked her to prepare a report and in the process she came to know about this project. Her personal initiative to search for short-term training scholarships earned her an opportunity to become a TESSA/OLnet fellow.

Her research interest focuses on the adaptation of OER materials in primary school education and more specifically, quality and evaluation issues relating to the sustainability and effectiveness of OER in Mauritius. This arises from her observation that very few people in Mauritius know about open learning and OER and she is therefore determined to see more get involved in the OER movement.  She is currently in the process of registering for her doctoral programme where she hopes to carry out more research in this area.

Main output

A project report on “Sustainable and effective use of Open Educational resources in existing primary curriculum with a view to enable technology enhanced pedagogy and community of practice through wiring schools”

Other outputs

Presentation at DETA pre-conference workshop

References

Gungadeen, Anuradha (2011). Use of Compendium Tool in Teacher Education to create digital OERs. In: DETA pre-conference workshop, 3-5 August, 2011, Maputo, Mozambique.

Kozinska, K (2011),"OLnet TESSA visiting Fellows from Mauritius (24 January - 4 February 2011): Anuradha (Anu) Gungadeen and Pritee Auckloo", olnet.org, 3 February [online], http://www.olnet.org/node/555 (Accessed 21 February 2012)

DETA pre-conference workshop

Anuradha’s main objective for attending the conference was to share what she had learnt in the course of her fellowship, what she had achieved and her successes and failures as she implemented her project. She also hoped to learn from the others and take what they were sharing and apply it to her context. As she attended the sessions and interacted with the other delegate, her pre-existing perceptions of the status of technology use in education were challenged. For example she was pleasantly surprised to discover how far the continent had moved forward in relation to overcoming technological barriers. Secondly, she was delighted to see a positive shift in gender participation as she observed that there were many women attending the conference.

However, Anuradha has some regrets because networking after the conference has not happened as she had envisaged. During her interaction with the contacts she made, there were plans for the way forward after sharing their experiences. However she says that this has not happened yet. 

Anuradha was also able to present her experience in introducing the compendium tool to her student and what she had learnt in the process.

Update since fellowship

In the first place, she has managed to pass on the knowledge she acquired during her OU visit to her students. One of her key learning points was how the Compendium tool delivered by OU’s KMI has been developed and used to support learning. She has been able to apply what she learnt about this tool by introducing it to her students who had no previous knowledge of mindmaps. In one of the modules which required application of open education software to design courseware, she asked her class of seven students to apply compendium in mounting the courseware. This was an important learning experience for the students who did not have prior knowledge of mind-maps. This was an experiential process as they came to know how to structure what is on the brain and put it on paper and then on software. More importantly was that in the process, the software failed and Anuradha had to seek help from the KMI team. This added their knowledge of software as they learnt how to fix problems when dealing with software. The outcome is that more than half the class did very well and they say they would use it in their own classroom setting.

Secondly, she has had an opportunity to collaborate with a home economics colleague to use OER in the conversion of a new curriculum for secondary education. This has come about in the process of promoting the concept of OER among her colleagues and showing them how open education software can be used to support creation of open courseware. Together with this colleague, they ran a two-week workshop with their students where they made effective use of available open source software in the conversion of a new curriculum for secondary. The participants (40 secondary educators - Home Economics) were first introduced to the identified open source software and thereon they had hands on working session to familiarise with the same. Further to that, they had to work in groups identifying the most appropriate content for conversion. An interesting observation made was that most of the participants did not have much prior knowledge about technology and least about open source resources. Therefore this experience exposed them to new skills they would use when they start practising in the classroom. Plans are to polish what the students created and send these resources the Ministry of Education for distribution to schools throughout the country.

Text extracted from pre-publication draft of report by Pauline Ngimwa, "Achieving impact in Africa through openness: OLnet TESSA Fellowships", March 2012. Full details of this publication will be available on this website when available.