Interview with Professor Moustapha Diack,
Director of MERLOT Africa Network

Professor Moustapha Diack is the Director of MERLOT Africa Network, an educational network of the African Higher Education Institutions, organisations that are championing eLearning in sub-Saharan Africa and US higher education institutions affiliated with the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) organisation. He is currently undertaking a doctoral programme in Science/Math Education (SMED) at Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. Professor Diack is also the President of Louisiana Academy of Sciences, and Associate Editor on the MERLOT Faculty Development Board.

eLA: Could you tell us about the MERLOT Africa Network and the things you do?

Prof Diack: The MERLOT Africa Network is an educational network of African higher education institutions, organisations championing eLearning in sub-Sahara Africa and US higher education institutions affiliated with MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) organisation. MERLOT is a premier eLearning community that provides free building blocks for simple learning management services that combine its Open Education Resources (OER) and Open Educational Services (OES) into a single, free and easy-to-use system. I often refer to MAN as an outreach programme with a primary goal of extending the MERLOT international community of practice to sub-Sahara Africa.

The network aims to facilitate collaboration and networking between US and African institutions affiliated to MERLOT, promote the development and adoption of OER as a model for deploying eLearning solutions and conduct educational research that leads to best practices in the scholarship of teaching and learning using OER. Our network currently includes many Africa higher education institutions and learning organisations such as the African Virtual University (AVU), eLearning Africa, and the UNESCO Open Training Platform. Other organisations that provide technology tools such as the Qedoc Interactive educational resources have recently joined the network. MAN is a major partner in the Qedoc Africa Project in support of the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC).

eLA: Open educational resources are immensely important to Africa given the challenges learners face, especially in terms of access and cost. What can you say is the rate of take-up of these electronic resources?

Prof Diack: I strongly believe that the adoption of OER and Open Access (OA) will help address these pressing issues. The rate of take-up, I would say, especially in sub-Sahara Africa, is very slow and there are many reasons to that. The UNESCO International Institute of Educational Planning (IIEP) working group on OER, that I am member of, identified many priority issues related to the effective deployment of OER such as the needs for awareness-raising and promotion, capacity-building, learning support services, technology tools and, of course, research that guides best practices.

This explains why one of MAN’s current missions is to raise awareness about the potentials of OER and OA to support development. In relation to that, MAN is now hosting, as part of the eLearning Africa Conference, pan-African fora on OER that gathers world leaders in the areas of OER research and development.

We also organise, as part of the MERLOT International Conferences (MICs), the “MERLOT Africa Panels” that gathers ICT for Development (ICT4D) experts. Also, MAN sponsors the MANeLA Awards for Exemplary OER Practices.

This annual event presents a “Leadership Award” to individuals or a group that have made significant advances in the understanding of the issues or innovations surrounding OER and the OER movement, the Virtual Laboratory Award to exemplary teaching and learning resources that promote inquiry-based/discovery learning and the Software for OER Content Authoring Award.

eLA: Do you think open educational resources are popular enough to facilitate quicker take-up?

Prof Diack: Although many OERs have been made available worldwide, little is known about their use. In the recent years, however, interest in OER has become a worldwide phenomenon and there is a growing global movement that is being championed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation through initiatives such as the OpenCourseWare (OCW) consortium spearheaded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the IIEP community interest and others.

OER is seen as a key enabler for bringing increased value to learning resources. I predict that this movement will expand more in the near future, especially in developing countries. As I indicated earlier, there is a critical need of awareness campaign in these countries in regard to the potential of sharing educational resource as OER.

eLA: Which African country is a good example where take-up has been or is proving successful and what has facilitated the quick take-up?

Prof Diack: It is difficult to tell since the efforts and initiatives (if any) in Africa are not well disseminated. I will however refer to the pioneering work of the African Virtual University (AVU), a member of the OCW Consortium, in deploying OCW with member institutions. I will tend to cite South Africa as example where the adoption of OER is being tested by various institutions. The take-up in this case is facilitated by the relative availability of infrastructure and also because the country has a long history of distance-learning provision.

eLA: One of the key challenges of eLearning is the lack of content being developed by teachers because there usually is no added incentive. How can this shortcoming be addressed?

Prof Diack: This may be true in developing economies such as North America and Western Europe. It is noteworthy that the OER movement is currently mostly funded by foundations, not learning institutions.

Indeed, institutions are still seeking sustainable models of OER development and deployment. I believe that faculty development and teacher training are critical in attaining a sustainable model. Also, a reward system to acknowledge peer contribution is critical.

I do not think that these issues are currently prevalent in sub-Sahara Africa, where the majority of countries are still dealing with more pressing issues such as Internet connectivity, lack of infrastructure and paucity of high-qualified teachers. Sustainable development of quality content is a difficult and very expensive proposition. For this reason, it is critical, as a first step, that developing economies leverage the Global Open Education initiatives as viable sources of quality educational resources that can support their eLearning initiatives. As a second step, the development of indigenous content should be promoted by educational systems if one wants to sustain a viable OER movement.

eLA: How does an institution become a member of MAN?

Prof Diack: Joining MAN is a simple three-steps process. One has to first of all be a member of a MERLOT organisation as an individual, then fill out and submit an institutional membership survey and finally facilitate the signing of a memorandum of understanding with that organisation.

eLA: And what usually is the response when MAN recruits an institution to expand your reach?

Prof Diack: Many African institutions have expressed their interests in joining the network. Our selection process is however based in part on the readiness of the institutions in terms of Internet connectivity, which is still a major problem on the continent and the eLearning aspirations of the institution.

As I indicated earlier, besides the individual institutions, MAN also partners with many educational organisation or networks with common or similar goals. For instance in the case of Open Access, MAN is currently entertaining a possible partnership with the Global Text Project.

eLA: To those that have not heard of MAN or have heard but have not approached you, what are the benefits of becoming a member?

Prof Diack: MERLOT is an international community of professional disciplines that supports the development of discipline-specific portals of resources that educators can use freely. MAN institutions use the MERLOT International Conference (MIC) and the eLearning Africa international conferences as hubs and fora for discussion and dissemination of best practices.

Members get free access to high-quality educational resources that cover more than 18 professional disciplines that institutions can use freely to design online courses for training, teaching and learning. They become members of a premier online community, the MERLOT Community, and have access to numerous opportunities for networking and professional development.

Members also have access to federated search and access to the Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) repositories. GLOBE is an alliance established among five international global repositories including MERLOT, the ARIADNE Foundation in Europe, Education Network Australia (EdNA Online), eduSourceCanada, Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) in the US and the National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME) in Japan.

eLA: What role can governments play in MAN activities and in what ways do you work with governments?

Prof Diack: There is no doubt that national governments are the most critical stakeholders for supporting a sustainable OER movement. This should be done through comprehensive educational policies and through investment in technology and infrastructure that support the movement.

However, MAN works directly with the academicians to promote change and awareness. As part of the eLearning Africa Conference, we also work sometimes directly with local committees often appointed by Ministries of Education of the host country. This enables us to better understand the educational needs of the country and to suggest outreach models and capacity-building opportunities that use Open Education Resources and Open Access.

eLA: Your ultimate goal is to promote the formation of a cross-cultural collaborative network of scholars and higher education faculties. What are the challenges you see ahead?

Prof Diack: The primary challenges are related to the lack of awareness among potential users, the critical need for faculty development and teacher training, and of course, the lack of adequate infrastructure such as Internet connectivity and adequate bandwidth. I find the Internet connectivity and bandwidth issues to be real bottlenecks. Although there are many Open Source technology tools that are now available to facilitate cross-cultural collaboration, their use is often limited by the availability of the adequate infrastructure in Africa.

eLA: And how can MAN institutions overcome these challenges in the interim?

Prof Diack: Although the situation is still not perfect, MAN institutions have the critical resources for collaborative networking using the Internet. Many Web 2.0 tools are bandwidth-friendly and can be used in many cases. Also, in the case of OER deployment in areas lacking Internet connectivity, we anticipate a model of securing the author’s or publisher’s permission to copy their materials onto the institution’s local area network (LAN) so that the documents can be made available to everyone within the institution freely and instantly. This permission garnering could be facilitated through the MERLOT/Authors Community.

eLA: I have come across institutions of higher learning here in Uganda that are developing local content of their own and there is also online content that is available. Which is a better model?

Prof Diack: Developing indigenous OER is something I would certainly applaud and recommend. There is a need for developing countries to become active participants in the OER movement by generating culturally sound multimedia assets. We need however to pay attention to the issue of quality control. The resource must be seen to be of high quality to be shared globally.

I strongly advocate the leveraging of the global open education movement and to take advantages of the various resources available. Besides the fact that they are free for use and that they are costly to produce, resources available through these repositories can serve as models for content development. The challenge here can be the issues of adaptation and localisation since most of the OER resources are not editable.

eLA: Prof Diack, many thanks for your time.

April 7th, 2008

Further information:

MERLOT Africa Network http://man.merlot.org

The 1st Africa Forum on Open Educational Resources
http://www.elearning-africa.com/div_man.php

Newsportal: Open Source and Open Content