My interest is in supporting teachers, and through them students, in primary and secondary schools in Kenya and Tanzania. This post will not discuss specific proposals but looks at three generic OER issues which will impact the value of OER in enabling support.
Fit of OER with local culture and pedagogy
Both countries have a very fixed, curriculum-based system with traditional teacher/textbook focused pedagogy. This has two consequences – teachers have little experience of self-directed learning (their own or their students) and little control over what they teach/how they teach it. Superficially therefore “delivering OER …..will have little effect on equipping teachers … with the competences, knowledge and skills to participate successfully in the knowledge economy”. (Geser, 2007, p.12). However, this problem has already been recognised. There are examples of successful initiatives (e.g. African Virtual Open Initiatives, the Commonwealth of Learning repository) which are targeted to this market. However, education authority policies will first have to recognise the value of less didactic, more learner-focused approaches if teachers are to be empowered and rewarded to develop skills in this area (Geser, 2007).
Difficulty of finding useful materials
It is unlikely that complete courses will be useful – they are at too high a level, too detached from current realities. It is more likely that individual lesson components or tools, which can supplement traditional approaches, will be perceived as usable. Hence learning objects rather than composite OER resources are likely to be most valuable. These resources will be at a low level of complexity “Any digital resource that can [be] reused to support learning” (Wiley cited in Albright, 2005, p.12). To find such objects requires some form of usable taxonomy and low-level reference system. This is a contentious issue which has inhibited rather than encouraged use of OER (Friesen, 2003) and is inconsistent among learning object repositories. Culture neutrality or (ir)relevance is also likely to constrain the search for usable materials with local skills unlikely to be adequate to modify open content (Hatakka, 2009). Initially support will have to come from sponsoring organisations which have the digital skills to search through relevant repositories.
Teacher/Learner recognition
There are several related issues. Text book dependency and mistrust of foreign materials may limit uptake of OER (Hatakka, 2009), not least because teachers can feel threatened by any dependence on external resources. The need to add their “personal flavour” (Hatakka, 2009, p.13) is driven as much by their need to demonstrate their own value as to increase the relevance of materials. Recognition of the teacher’s own learning or their transferred learning will therefore be important. A ‘Badges’ type of system (Mozilla Foundation, 2012) may well be ideal in that it does not pretend to assess complete learning, rather recognises evidence of specific knowledge or application. Such evidence of the teacher’s own learning might be a single OER comprehension exercise in English, chosen to demonstrate capability of semantic understanding of language. Evidence of development of skills might be an example of use of a ‘Hot Potatoes’ type of utility to develop a class learning resource (Downes, 2001).

References
Albright, P. (2005) UNESCO (IIEP): Final forum report. 2008-09-01 [Online]. Available at http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/oerforumfinalreport.pdf (accessed 25 Mar 2013).
Downes, S. (2001) ‘Learning objects: resources for distance education worldwide’,IRRODL, vol. 2, no. 1 [online]. Available at http://www.irrodl.org/ index.php/ irrodl/ article/view/ 32/ 378. (accessed 25 Mar 2013).
Friesen, N. (2003) ‘Three objections to learning objects and e-learning standards’ in McGreal, R. (ed.) (2004) Online Education Using Learning Objects, London, Routledge, pp. 59–70. Draft available online at http://www.learningspaces.org/ papers/objections.html (accessed 25 Mar 2013).
Geser, G. (2007) (ed) Open Educational Practices and Resources. OLCOS Roadmap 2012. , Salzburg Research, EduMedia Group. Salzburg, January 2007 [Online]. Available at http://www.olcos.org/english/roadmap/download/index.htm (accessed 25 Mar 2013).
Hatakka, M. (2009), ‘Build it and they will come? – Inhibiting factors for reuse of open content in developing countries’, EJISDC – The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 1-16 [Online]. Available at http://www.ejisdc.org/ojs2/index.php/ejisdc/article/view/545/279 (accessed 25 Mar 2013).
Mozilla Foundation (2012) ‘Open Badges for Lifelong Learning’, working paper developed with Peer2Peer University and The MacArthur Foundation [Online]. Available at https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/b/b1/OpenBadges-Working-Paper_092011.pdf (accessed 25 Mar 2013).