This afternoon the OER Research Hub team had an interesting conference call with ROER4D, an OER research project with some similarities to our own which is based in Cape Town, South Africa.  They are working across South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Cental and South East Asia to meet the following objectives.

  • Empirical knowledge base on OER impact
  • Building networks of OER scholars
  • Curate and communicate research

They are at quite an early stage in their project but approaching this goals through the following kinds of work:

  • Literature reviews
  • Surveys
  • Case studies of OER adoption
  • Impact studies
  • Analysis of educational expenditure & role of OER

Here’s the set of slides that explains what their project is about…

There are a number of points of commonality between OERRH and ROER4D:

  • Global focus
  • Addressing the difficulty of gathering ‘impact’ data
  • Mixed methods and survey based research
  • Open communication throughout the life of the project
  • Release of research data openly

We offered to share OER Research Hub research instruments (and the benefit of our experience in this area of research) as well as making OER Impact Map available for gathering evidence against ROER4D research questions.  It might also be possible to collaborate on a general call for evidence with OER Research Hub focusing on the north and ROER4D on the global south.  This could also ultimately support the development of stronger links between the global north and global south.  There was also some talk of a joint webinar and some other collaborative activities.  The conversation will continue at OCWC 14…