Edulink II

The SideCAP project helps to promote poverty reduction and promote sustainable development in ACP States because the work of the project focuses on the use of open source software and free software in the design of educational courses.

There has been an important focus during the project in the use, creation, and re-purposing of Open Educational Resources (OER) which are free and easily shareable on the internet. These OER have been fully utilised by the project team in the design of short educational 'courses' of high quality that can be contextualised and delivered by educational institutions in less developed countries. The SideCap project has enabled our ACP partner institutions to develop many courses using OER resources such as teacher training course by the University of Mauritius (http://vcampus.uom.ac.mu/teachertraining) which is delivered to 300 educators in Mauritius and a study skills course which is freely available to staff and students at the University of the South Pacific: (http://oil.otago.ac.nz/oil/index/Modules.html)

A key element in the project has been in providing training and support for educational staff in the partner countries in the creation and re-use of OER and the skills to pass this knowledge to other staff who have not been able to attend SideCAP workshops. These 'cascade' activities have been instrumental in widening the impact of the capacity-building element of the project and have resulted in a great number of staff being introduced to this 'Creative Commons' concept.

The common pool of these educational resources has not been limited by the ability of the academic partners to purchase expensive hardware or software, not restricted to the affordability of the resources. Partnerships between European and developing countries have been able to create and share high-quality educational resources at no extra cost to developing countries.

Article prepared by the Project Coordinator, The Open University