Open Educational Resources within a Knowledge System for Achieving Quality Education SDG

Open Educational Resources within a Knowledge System for Achieving Quality Education SDG

The high levels of poverty and poor access to quality education, among a myriad of other challenges, have contributed to economic and social exclusion in Africa. These exclusions must be viewed against the backdrop of the emergence of a global knowledge-based society in which the production and dissemination of knowledge has become critical for meeting social and economic needs. Education, in the view of Breidlid (2009), is critical for poverty alleviation and economic and social inclusion. Education is central to promoting sustainable development. It is therefore essential to mobilize necessary resources, including openness resources to steer the global south towards economic and social inclusion. This paper will discuss the exploration of a ‘knowledge system’ that facilitates the networking of open educational resources (OERs) to strengthen the educational system in Africa. The bringing together of contributors who use appropriate technology for innovation will enhance the educational process which will in turn advance learning for growth and development. Key to the effective contribution of knowledge systems to SDGs is information and communication technologies (ICTs). Libraries have responded positively to the potential of ICTs and have recently been utilising that potential to offer publishing services using Open Source Systems (OSS) such as Open Journal Systems (OJS), DSpace, and the Open Monograph Press (OMP). These open source systems, which are a significant component of the openness movement, are exploited to deliver open content which includes open access publishing and sharing of scholarly content. The bias in this paper is the publishing of open educational resources for the development of education in the global south. An educated and informed society will contribute to the broadening of access to wealth for social justice, growth and development.