Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) - Case studies on African OER initiatives in

Figure 1 KNUST School of Medical Sciences, Regents The Health OER Initiative began in November of the University of Michigan, Flickr (CC 2008 and was aimed at developing health- BY) related OER through collaboration between African institutions, including OER Africa, the College of Health Sciences at KNUST, the University of Ghana (UG), the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of the West. [...] This involved staff from the College of Health Sciences, the KNUST library, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Directorate, the Department of Communication Design, and other parts of the university as part of a strategy to ‘build a multidisciplinary team for the development and use of OER at KNUST’.4 KNUST OER purchased basic equipment which included video cameras, laptops, microp. [...] This begs the question of how to embed projects within the structure of an institution from the design phase.33 The KNUST team also highlighted a lack of awareness about OER as a barrier to institutional buy- in and therefore sustainability of the OER-related activities.34 Regarding the challenge of ensuring institutional buy-in to promote sustainability, the following was noted: For a project lik. [...] The only way we can know the impact is by looking at the visits on the site but we would not be able to tell impact of usage.37 This speaks to the challenge of using PDFs instead of links – PDFs make it difficult to track who is using the resource, how often, and the impact of the resource, while using links allows one to track usage more reliably and precisely by being able to see, for example, h. [...] This speaks to the importance of prioritising sustainability from the design phase of the project, to ensure that it is considered upfront and that it gives the initiative the best chance of long-term impact.