The goal of Siyavula is to ensure that teachers in South Africa have access to a comprehensive set of free and open educational resources that are curriculum-aligned and sustainable. Key to the effective roll-out of such a project is ensuring that the project aligns with the needs and realities on the ground.

How is Siyavula going to achieve its goal?

The short answer is we will enable the appropriate use of technology to support the formation of new and enhance the process of existing communities of practice of teachers that share, adapt, develop, enhance and redistribute resources.

A simple schematic of the education system shows how the curriculum is determined by the Department of Education (DoE) and then propagates through the provinces, districts and ultimately to the Curriculum Advisors who are charged with ensuring and supporting its delivery in the classroom. When we look at the landscape of teachers we find that the majority of teachers feel overwhelmed by the task ahead of them. Issues like insufficient support, resources or training contribute to this and makes them feel isolated.

We do find groups of teachers (communities of practice) that come together to share resources, discuss curriculum and content and support each other. These groups swap and share information, resources and support. One notable feature of these groups is that they often seem to be formed by reasonably well-resourced teachers, so the access to resources is not the sole driver for their existence, and the sharing of information and support is important too. Sharing is fundamental to teaching and a core part of teachers’ values.
To enhance the effectiveness of groups and support the isolated teachers, given the the ideas Siyavula is building on, we need to provide:

This will allow Siyavula to create a framework that supports the education system. The framework needs to accept the curriculum, allow swap-and-share groups the ability to share resources and have the discussions they need, allow users like Curriculum Advisors to vet resources and ensure that the isolated teachers can get access to the resources.

One of the beautiful features of using a web-based platform to support the sharing is that the teachers who are creating material aren’t impacted by others downloading it whereas, with paper resources, they’d need to produce extra copies, transport them and actually push their content out. Now the resources can be accessed when and as needed with no extra work required by the original author.

To support as many teachers as possible from the launch of the project, Siyavula has acquired a set of curriculum resources which teachers can use, adapt, print and enhance in addition to adding their own resources to the project. The material that Siyavula has acquired so far covers:

• Foundation phase – workbooks for all learning areas in English and Afrikaans
• Intermediate phase – workbooks for all learning areas in English and Afrikaans
• Senior phase – workbooks for all learning areas in English and Afrikaans
• FET phase – textbooks for Physical Science and Mathematics

The acquisition and sharing of this content allows Siyavula to engage with teachers as a sharing partner, in contrast to seeking donations of content in good faith or adopting a pure advocacy role.

Over time isolated teachers will also begin to share resources back, ensuring that their latent knowledge, especially around context challenges, starts to be shared, and then either form their own communities or join existing ones so that we eventually have communities of practice that are adapting and enhancing resources for all the imaginable contexts that exist within the South African education system. The wide variety of contexts is something that the traditional publishing model is unlikely to address and requires very localised and specific knowledge. This enabling feature of OERs is likely to have even more of an impact than the cost savings that are possible.

I’ve mentioned wanting to develop an open assessment bank to complement my other projects and that it was recently approved. I’m happy to report that development is well underway. We are calling this project FullMarks.

The logo and website are still pending and, of course, we’re crowdsourcing their design. Feel free to take a look at 99Designs where we’ve just opened the competition.

We are extending the work done by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) on a closed bank (but open source software). We have the blessing of the HSRC to proceed but, in the interests of full disclosure, with a strong word of caution that an assessment bank can be a blunt intstrument. A bank will save teachers time and increase the average quality of items but their research has shown that, unless teachers act on the identification of learners’ strengths and weaknesses, little real impact is felt when considering learners’ understanding.

I’m happy to charge on ahead with development of this particular blunt instrument, not because I’m irresponsible (trust me, if I wanted to be irresponsible I wouldn’t give myself another project to worry about) but because I feel that their concerns provide the very justification for the open bank. I’ll have a crack at a brief explanation of why I think this is so.

Saving Teachers’ Time

Have you spoken to a teacher in South Africa lately? Time is their biggest concern. Now I expect to have some people disagree with that, they’ll cite resources, lack of support etc. but the very first thing teachers tell me is that they don’t have enough time. Sure, I hear about resources, poor support, curriculum obfuscation, and all sorts of other things, but time is always first.

This isn’t a trick to get teachers’ attention, there is no question that time is an issue so we should work to save them time if we can. The time saving decreases stress and leads to focus that can be deployed elsewhere.

Improved Quality of Assessment Items

We know that the sharing of assessment items can lead to an increase in the average quality of items used in the classroom. Again, there is no question that this is a good thing. As the number quality items grows, teachers will need to develop fewer questions, allowing them to spend more time being creative and focusing on quality rather than quantity.

Open Assessment Bank

Just saving time and improving quality can still lead to little impact on the learner as the HSRC point out. In their analysis, however, they’ve been looking at a closed bank where teachers are passive consumers. My bank will be an open bank allowing questions to be viewed, added, duplicated, and adapted. We will also allow for feedback in a few ways. Users will be able to vote as to whether or not a question’s solution is correct, they will be able to rate questions and they will be able to comment on questions and answers.

Feedback is the key to making sure that the assessment bank is an effective tool (as opposed to a blunt instrument). A lot can be learnt from receiving feedback from your peers as to whether or not the solutions to your questions are correct. Even more can be learnt from a detailed discussion around whether or not a question tests the assessment standards that it is tagged with and how to respond if learners struggle with the question. This will also help teachers further their understanding of the outcomes and appropriate assessment of them. Teachers just need to participate in the community, sharing items, ideas and feedback.

The final possibility of improved understanding of the outcomes and how to respond to learners’ responses, correct and incorrect, is what gives FullMarks so much more potential impact. It is the open aspect that is crucial. My job is to create an environment where teachers feel there is real benefit to contributing. At first this will be to save time, but over time it will evolve to active participation in discussions around how to assess according to the standards and respond when learners struggle.

I believe that sustainable solutions to the challenges facing South Africa, HIV/AIDS, unemployment, rampant violent crime, corruption and the like, cannot be found without ensuring that all South Africans have access to a proper education. Imagine poorly educated policemen trying to solve crimes, insufficient or poorly trained doctors dealing with TB outbreaks, young entrepreneurs who can’t do basic numeracy trying to start new businesses, etc. What am I on about you might ask? Well, I see helping education as the key to a peaceful and happy future in South Africa for myself, my family and other South Africans; our collective future depends on it. I think that organisations or individuals who conduct themselves in an underhanded way to take advantage of the education system are reprehensible. They are jeopardising our future!

Often, when presenting Siyavula or FHSST, I am asked about the “poor publishers”. Please don’t mistake that for sarcasm, people literally use the phrase “poor publishers”. People are concerned that free, open, volunteer content projects are somehow going to destroy big business. For the record, we’d love to see the publishers participating in the Open Educational Resources (OER) arena and there are a number of ways this can happen. This post isn’t about OER business models for publishers though, its about whether the “poor” part is justified.

Publishers and Market Forces

The rise of OERs, and platforms to support them, are market forces in the world of publishing. Many other markets have had to respond to changing cultures and technology. The large international publishers have no excuse for not being aware of what is happening around open content. The publicity around Wikipedia alone should have made them all sit up and take notice. Businesses that don’t respond to changing markets allow themselves to become irrelevant. The publishers have had more than enough time, and they have more than sufficient monetary reserves to have done research aplenty into the technology, licences and developments taking place. If they haven’t, then, quite frankly, they deserve to feel a little market pressure.

I was pointed to a great article a while back on the future of scientific publishing written by Michael Nielsen, which expands on some of the reasons that publishers are feeling a bit of pressure at the moment. Many of the ideas mentioned, relating to why large businesses struggle to adapt, are applicable to all areas of publishing and I strongly recommend giving it a read. Nielsen points out that the very traditional structures that have led to the publishers’ success are now holding them back. They do need to adapt to survive and some of them won’t make it.

Publishers and Underhanded Tactics

Publishers feel the need to strengthen the messaging around their copyright in school textbooks.

Here is a scanned page from a South African school textbook published by  a well known publisher. I have tried to obscure everything except the message of interest and am looking forward to an angry letter from a publisher, which I’ll be sure to share.

It is important to note that this message is in addition to the standard copyright notice. This message can only have been added through a series of deliberate actions by the publisher. It certainly didn’t get there by accident. Someone with sufficient authority within the publishing house made this decision and, one can only assume, they consulted their lawyers regarding the language. It would be ludicrous to make statements about the law without checking.

Given the language of the message, it can only have been added for one purpose and that is to stop some set of people photocopying pages out of this book. I guess that the publisher became aware of some people photocopying this book or other titles in their catalogue and felt that such a message would stop them. It could have been anybody, but let us be realistic, this is a grade-specific school textbook. There are two groups of people who will ever look at this book: teachers and learners. This means that it must have been one of these groups that had been photocopying pages.

If you visit the website for the Publishers’ Association of South Africa you will find this text:

Am I allowed to photocopy part of a book for my own personal and private use?
Copyright is not infringed by any fair dealing with a literary work for the purposes of the personal or private use of the work by the person making the copy. What is ‘fair’ in any given situation will always depend on the circumstances of that situation.

Is it correct that as long as I photocopy 10% or less of a published work, this is permitted?
No, it’s not correct. The Copyright Act says nothing about any percentage. 10% may be ‘fair’ but then again, it may not, since the test for fair dealing is qualitative as well as quantitative.

But surely I am allowed to make more than one copy if there is no commercial gain involved?
The regulations to the Act offer certain concessions for educational institutions and for non-profit libraries. These include a defined number of multiple copies strictly for classroom use or discussion, but exclude compilations.

I want my each of students to copy for themselves an article from a journal. Can I put a photocopy of the article on the reserve shelf in my educational institution’s library for each student to copy under ‘fair dealing’?
No. The copy on the reserve shelf is an infringing copy because it is not made for the private use or study of the person making it.

How about if I put the journal itself (not a photocopy) on the reserve shelf and tell my students to copy it for themselves?
Although each student may make a ‘fair dealing’ copy, 100 students each making a copy results in 100 copies, whereas fair dealing is intended to apply in the case of the single copy made by the person using the work.

What this is telling you is that there are fair dealing and educational exceptions to the rule stated categorically in the message publishers have chosen to add. Furthermore, those exceptions apply specifically in the contexts of the only reasonable audiences for the textbook. Despite the fact that these exceptions exist, and the publishers are well aware of them, they have chosen not to mention them in any way. As far as I am concerned, the message publishers have added is incorrect in the majority of circumstances that it is trying to influence.

Now, do teachers and learners know about these exceptions? Learners probably don’t, I certainly didn’t when I was at school, and teachers might. If teachers do, then adding this message is redundant because teachers know that it has all sorts of caveats attached and wouldn’t change their activities. But the message was added and so I can only assume that the majority of teachers don’t know about the exceptions and (publishers clearly hope) will be influenced by the message. This message would only have been added deliberately as a means to try to change their behaviour.

Remember, this book is only useful in an educational context to learners and teachers and so the educational exceptions will apply very often, allowing photocopying of this book.

Quick summary:

• a deliberate message in addition to the copyright notice has been added
• it targets teachers and learners
• who have legal exceptions to the message
• adding the message only makes sense if they don’t know about the exceptions

So I’m left to conclude that the publisher has added a message to intimidate teachers and learners, playing on their ignorance, knowing full well that exceptions, that teachers and learners could benefit from, do exist!

I see this message as a very aggressive defensive-response to activities taking place. Activities that may well be legal and that are taking place because we have an education system that is under-resourced and under pressure. This is not a positive response designed to help anyone, not even the publisher.

Rich Publishers

I get irritated when people only complain about problems and never suggest solutions. Is there a possible positive response under these circumstances? I think so. In fact, I think that it could be so positive that it would help the publisher gain market share and real favour as well as help education.

My imaginary publishing company would have had this message (with a lawyer to check the language first of course):

You may only photocopy pages from this textbook if you are invoking fair dealing or educational exceptions to our copyright terms. If you find yourself in a position where you need to make photocopies for educational purposes, please let us know. This information will help us to identify where books are needed, which books are being used, and whether or not our distribution is working effectively.

Why do I think that mine is better (it is too long!)? Mine has benefits for everyone because it promotes better information flow making those doing the copying allies of the publishers rather than their enemies. Here are some of the benefits that occurred to me off the top of my head:

• Publishers’ benefits:
  • identify areas where there is a lack of textbooks for future market expansion (where are books needed?)
  • identify which books are really popular (which books are being copied?)
  • identify if distribution channels are working properly (should they already have our books?)
  • identify if only selected sections of books are being copied to identify which book sections are hitting the mark (which pieces of our books are popular?)
• Teachers’ and learners’ benefits:
  • better equipped to access resources to improve education
  • broader access to educational resources without fear of legal repercussions
  • better awareness of their rights
  • feedback channel to publishers which will help improve content in the long run

Rather than clamping down, big publishers could in fact gain more market presence by opening up a little bit and using this information to improve their products and services. Further, this may ultimately lead to an increase in total market size as the educated population grows.

Back to my original topic: “poor publishers”? Quite frankly, my sympathy goes to the learners who have to share one book between four and cannot do their homework properly, while publishing house executives sit in plush offices dreaming up misleading copyright messages to intimidate teachers and learners.

Today I received the good news that the assessment bank I mentioned previously has been approved and we will begin building it as soon as possible, hopefully on Monday.

We are not going to re-invent the wheel and will be extending (NOT forking) an already existing assessment bank that has been developed by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) which they are calling TARMii. The HSRC has indicated that they have no objection to us creating an open bank as they’ve released their source code under the Gnu General Public Licence (GPL). The HSRC implementation locks down the authoring side of the bank to a few specific users at the HSRC. Their bank is populated with Grade 4-6 (Intermediate phase) items for English and Mathematics and will allow teachers to:

• create class-lists,
• generate a test extremely rapidly, providing a question paper and memorandum,
• capture learners results for the tests, and
• generate reports on a learner-by-assessment standard basis.

We will keep all this functionality, which they have already tested, as it is really useful to teachers but we want to allow them to benefit from such a tool for all subjects and grades as quickly as possible. The HSRC will spend some time trialing the site with teachers and the items they have created before extending to other learning areas/subjects and grades.

To make this available to everyone we need to open up the authoring side and provide some means for community vetting. Our extension to the assessment bank software will cover:

• community feedback:
  • ratings
  • comments
  • verify as correct
• authoring:
  • simplify UI
  • allow question cloning for minor modifications
  • add version control
• test generation:
  • allow test to be tweaked (not currently available)
  • browsing for additional/replacement questions.

This compliments Siyavula as it will bring more people into a the OER space but channel time and energy that Siyavula is not trying to channel as teachers spend a lot of time sharing, adapting and creating assessment items. The possibility of integrating the two exists as TARMii has made use of a number of tools/standards used or developed by Connexions, for example the WYSIWYG MathML editor, and the same development team, Upfront Systems, that has helped us extend the Rhaptos platform, on which Connexions is built, built TARMii and will do the extensions for us.

The community of teachers in SA is chomping at the bit for an assessment bank. We have had multiple requests for bank software that communities are already prepared to populate themselves. Providing the different groups with a single tool will allow them to feed off each others energy and allow us to begin with a bang. Working with existing communities also makes the tool much more sustainable.

It is great to be building a tool in response to a real demand as a lot less energy needs to go into advocacy and messaging.

All teachers in South Africa need to have the time, focus, support and resources necessary to deliver the curriculum effectively. I would like to ensure that they have access to an online assessment bank tool plus toolkit to generate tests, capture and analyse learners’ results and provide detailed reporting on a learner-by-learner, class or national basis as to learning outcomes achieved. The assessment bank would be built according to Open Education philosophy encapsulated in the Cape Town Open Education Declaration.

If we support communities of teachers sharing, adapting and enhancing assessment items in iterative, open and transparent ways it will save individual teachers’ time, provide assessment items of the highest quality and enhance the sharing of innovative ideas. The project would need to provide the simple, intuitive tools, support and advocacy necessary to allow teachers to achieve a critical mass of items. Furthermore, assessment items would need to be tagged with meta-data so that learners’ results can be captured and analysed allowing teachers to access reports that pin-point individual learner’s weaknesses and strengths, allowing for targeted interventions to support individual learners’ needs.

I have already been on the receiving end of many requests for an assessment bank, more so now that we are running teachers’ workshops as part of Siyavula. The original software development plan for Siyavula called for the integration of a new resource type into Connexions that would allow the automatic generation of tests. In retrospect it was too ambitious at that time but circumstances have changed and we are now in a position to deploy an assessment bank relatively easily that meets the criteria outlined above.

In embarking on this little exercise I think that we could achieve differing levels of success, all useful:

1. The basic success criterion is that teachers  regularly use assessment items from the bank. For sustainability, it is important that we see items being added by teachers. If we see daily access by teachers and contribution statistics comparable to 1% of visits then we would deem the basic assessment bank as a reference for teachers a success and likely to be sustainable.
2. Should regular test generation take place on the site, it would indicate that we have sufficient items in a number of subject areas to be a useful tool for a new teacher and could be certain that teachers were saving time by using it and that we are making an impact in the classroom.
3. If the tools for capturing results and generating reports are being used it would indicate that the tool  is useful in helping to guide day-to-day classroom practice and that teachers are now more aware of individual learners’ needs.

Teachers contributing items would also have joined the family of OER authors and it would significantly lower the barrier to getting them to contribute modules to Connexions by illustrating the benefits of sharing, acclimatising them to working online and ensuring that they feel like they are part of a much larger, virtual community. I would expect to see teachers who are comfortable authoring items on the assessment bank quickly stepping up to working on modules on Connexions.