Nelson Mandela University: Mandela Uni represented at Open Education Global Conference #R2bP
Learning Development’s Gino Fransman recently represented the Mandela Open Education team in Nantes, France, for the OE Global Conference 2022.
Gino is also the Africa Hub Coordinator for the Open Education for a Better World Programme, a UNESCO international mentoring action generating free Open courses from practitioners across the world related to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs (www.oe4bw.org).
He will represent the continent’s 2022 authors and global mentors in Vipava, Slovenia in September, along with six representatives from Africa.
His recent presentation was entitled “Open Education Influencers and Capacity Building with OER” (OER – Open Education Resources). He touched on how Mandela Uni has tackled digging deeper into the Open Education world over the past five years and how we, as a University, want to move forward in curating Open Education Resources (OER) and making learning more accessible to all.
Mandela Uni’s OpenEdInfluencers are currently working on an Open Textbook in the performing arts and will release a call for more authors this month. The textbook will be free and accessible to anyone who wishes to use it, in line with the Open Education and Sustainable Development Goal of expanding access to quality education, thereby improving student success.
The Open Education (OE) Global Conference 2022 involved the coming together of Open Education practitioners, policy builders and decision-makers from all over the world, to present existing solutions and practices that inform and guide Open Education. Open Education community members also shared, collaborated, learned, networked, and celebrated each other’s work.
One of the conference’s keynote speakers was Dr Sian Proctor (pictured below with Gino), a geology professor, explorer, poet, and commercial astronaut. She addressed how Open Education Resources and blockchain technology has a space to change the way one learns. She encouraged the audience to strive towards creating just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive spaces (J.E.D.I. spaces).