Open Education 2013

At Siyavula, we have our own 'open policy' in everything that we do, which feeds back into strengthening the impact of our work. This has been instrumental in our success. The broader community has responded strongly in support of us and our activities, something which we attribute primarily to our culture of openness, transparency and honesty.

Community building and collaborative authoring are key features of the Siyavula business plan and sustainability model. Anything that we produce with the community is made available under an open copy right license. This includes all the textbooks that have been produced using a collaborative authoring model with volunteers. We also believe in leading an open, transparent process in the creation and review of our open resources. We have found that this helps to build an open community around the resources and facilitates adoption of these resources.

The South African government has printed the Siyavula textbooks for the whole country for the past 2 years. This also provides a unique opportunity to start to educate the public about 'openness' through our use of strictly open source software in the production of the resources, as well as drawing on openly licensed videos and simulations with which the books are populated, and creating awareness about citizen science.

I will discuss how our open policy culture at Siyavula has started to impact the broader community in South Africa. From government level in that they are starting to see the benefits of open policy through our unique relationship with them, to educators who are learning about what they can use in their classrooms to create a stimulating environment, to the general public who now has the opportunity to become involved in and contribute to an open, transparent education project, and to the learners who are engaging with a 'living' resource.