Using AI to Promote OER in Education

CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY

Some of the difficulties encountered were finding a suitable time slot to hold the workshop. To mitigate this challenge, the workshop was structured to start in the afternoon till early evening. Time was spent doing some searches for suitable resource material.

ADVICE FOR TEACHER EDUCATORS

• Learn and understand what OER are and how they can be used for the benefit of teaching and learning.
• Recognise the importance of collaboration and sharing knowledge as a way of embracing continuous professional development
• Learn and acquire the necessary ICT knowledge and skills to be able to be productive
• Aim early to start using AI in OER development

IMPACT BEYOND THE ACTIVITY

This work could be of great benefit to others through acquisition of skills to navigate and put to use AI in their teaching. The feedback from the workshop indicated that there was a need to extend this training to colleagues in other faculties so as to improve quality of lecturers’ output. The facilitators agreed that a similar workshop should be done for the rest of the academics. Additionally, the knowledge acquired could be used to enhance the quality of the institution’s existing systems to better utilise AI.

KEY LESSONS

It was observed that the earlier training on OER was helpful to the School staff while others still needed more teaching on the potential impact which AI and OER can make in their normal teaching activities. Everybody was aware that AI had permeated and continue to influence the education sector. So, the participants were very satisfied with the training as they were more energised and encouraged to embrace the use of AI in a responsible manner. However, the faculty was surprised that one of the older lecturers was already a step ahead with their knowledge and use of AI. The most important lesson learnt by many participants was the need to collaborate and share knowledge and skills in AI and how it could be used to support production of teaching and learning resources.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI can be used to facilitate development of localised, interactive, and quality OER materials.
• Collaboration is an important enabler of co-creation using available tools
• Adoption of OER development in the era of AI should be accelerated but well-coordinated.
• Consider the potential impact of unethical use of AI in educational institutions. Staff skills in prompt engineering, multimedia development and digital literacy are needed in AI for OER.
• Develop awareness of OER policy which is often constrained by systemic challenges, governance instability, limited institutional continuity, and insufficient technical capacity.