The University of Cape Town has launched an OpenContent Directory that allows academics to share teaching and learning materials and makes a body of knowledge accessible to all. It will contribute South African resources to the global Knowledge Commons, Vice-chancellor Dr Max Price said, and is the first step towards Open UCT - a broader initiative that will make a vast range of resources, including research and community work, available online.
The university is the second in South Africa to join the Open-Courseware Consortium, a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions around the world using a shared model to create a body of free educational resources. The University of the Western Cape was the first to join.
Funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, the directory was developed as part of the Open Education Resources (OER) project in the university's centre for educational technology.
"It's quite revolutionary," said Associate Professor Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, Director of the OER project. "It gives anyone with internet access the opportunity to participate in learning and knowledge-sharing."
The initiative was developed by UCT in recognition of the need to make African knowledge more accessible to the world and to disadvantaged groups in developing countries. Because of the cost involved in printing books locally, academics in Africa have been largely dependent on overseas materials.
"Previously we had to inherit what was seen," said Hodgkinson-Williams. "But now we can put some of our uniquely South African and African material online to give the world an African perspective." It's also about making information available to the taxpayer, who often doesn't directly see the benefits of paying for public enterprises like universities.
In addition, the initiative facilitates interdisciplinary cooperation. In many cases, different departments are teaching similar subjects but academics do not know what resources their colleagues are using.
For instance, the anthropology department might offer a research design course and so might the school of education but the lectures are conducted in separate classrooms. OpenContent gives academics the opportunity to share resources and expertise.
"It really helps to know what other lecturers are doing," said Hodgkinson-Williams.
It is not only about providing access. The directory also promotes participation and the adaptability of knowledge. Students and the public can in many cases edit work if it falls under a certain licence, much like the online collaborative encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
"In the past, we never conceived of materials we could use and remix and then put back again," said Hodgkinson-Williams. "It's part of the bigger open movement, about sharing and collaborating."
Similar trends are taking place with software such as Lotus Notes and Google, which has pioneered open source publishing with books and is expanding into other areas.
The longer term OpenUCT initiative will significantly expand the amount of resources made accessible. Research work, often tucked away in obscure scholarly publications, will be made available online, along with community work in the form of reports, posters and booklets.
"Depending on their particular interest, a person can go from scholarly material to really easy teaching and learning material to booklets aimed at people who have no university background at all," said Hodgkinson-Williams. "That's the long term goal."
The process is simple. Academics voluntarily post lecture notes and other teaching materials to the OpenContent system. Before publication, the information goes through a moderation process, primarily to check for copyright violations. If there is an issue, the moderation team helps the academic identify alternatives.
Hodgkinson-Williams said lecturers were on the whole vigilant about referencing text, and most instances of copyright infringement related to photographs, graphics and pictures.
Once materials have been uploaded to the OpenContent website, anyone with the internet can access it. Recent posts include "Discovering Information Systems: An exploratory approach" and "An Introduction to Molecular Virology", as well as basic how-to manuals for Microsoft and Windows.
Academics on the whole are embracing the initiative. Around 70 attended its launch and many were already uploading materials the following day. The appeal lies in the apparently limitless potential of the medium, and in providing quality, up-to-date education materials for students.
"It's especially important in places like Africa and in sciences like microbiology, where textbooks are quickly out of date, and are expensive," said Ed Rybicki, a professor in the department of Molecular and Cell Biology.
Rybicki is also enthusiastic about the accessibility of the information. He said he has had university students from all over the world write to him about his pages and several universities have made them reference material, in South Africa and other countries including Brazil and the United Kingdom.
"It is a good idea to let the public in on what is otherwise seen as a closed and specialist environment, so that certain things like viruses and AIDS can be demystified, by an expert rather than by a civilian," said Rybicki.
But it begs the question: if high-level knowledge is so freely available, what does it say about the value of a university degree?
Nothing, said Hodgkinson-Williams: "Having information is not the same as being taught by someone and receiving accreditation. If content were the only thing, then yes this would signal the end. But it's not."
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