A grape that sees another gets ripe: Some OER issues for the Commonwealth

Abstract

Human development Index gives a high importance to the gross enrollment ratio. Therefore the future of countries is more and more dependent on the knowledge, skills, and resourcefulness of its human resources. However, most of the countries continue to feel beleaguered due to their failure to address the issues of access, quality and equity in higher education. Inequalities exist both between and within countries. Open Educational Resources (OER) have given a ray of hope for countries to do away with these issues and inequalities. However there are problems aplenty. Current research highlights the barriers for OER adoption as contextual and language gaps, cultural diversity, differences in educational privilege & literacy and need for basic education. The very definition of “Commonwealth” says that it is an intergovernmental organisation in which countries with diverse social, political and economic backgrounds are regarded as equal in status. To achieve this one has to look for inequalities and how these can be overcome. The paper thus proposes to analyze the commonwealth countries on the basis of data, collected by COL from governmental, intergovernmental, and international organisation sources for each country. It will use parameters like Rural Population percent, Adult Literacy Rates, Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), Primary Dropouts, Total Public Expenditure on Education as a % of GNP and access to computer & internet. The paper intends to do an exploratory analysis to discover methods that can work as solutions for issues and inequalities faced by countries for effective use of OER. Eventually it is cooperation within the Commonwealth that will see each country prosper and achieve it educational goals. Hence it rightly said, “A grape that sees another gets ripe.” // Paper ID: 293