Over the past two weeks, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (www.iskme.org) has visited schools, districts, educators and administrators in both resourced and under-resourced schools in the Western Cape, and has attended the SciFest 2009 in the Eastern Cape, as part of its research and evaluation work on the Siyavula project.
At SciFest, ISKME has conducted surveys of teachers and observed the Siyavula workshops to gain insight into teacher’s curriculum needs and perceptions around Siyavula and open educational resources more generally. In particular, observations of the Siyavula workshop and preliminary analysis of post-workshop surveys completed by participants revealed that teachers are not only excited about free content, but also about all of the possibilities that Siyavula offers—from sharing their own content, to working with other teachers to create content, to adapting content to their local classroom needs. Teachers were also enthusiastic about the time saving possibilities offered through use of Siyavula—through more easily accessed, curriculum-aligned content, and also through the collaboration possibilities offered.
The workshop has attracted teachers, curriculum advisors, local students and others, mainly from the Eastern Cape but also elsewhere. One session was made primarily up of 14 FET students, who attended the workshop with their teacher. Two of the students explained how Siyavula content is more concise, interesting and easy to comprehend than their text-heavy textbooks. Two other workshop sessions attracted trainers in non-governmental organizations, who travel to schools to train teachers on-site in math and science. These trainers expressed interest in using Siyavula content in their training work.
Some of the teachers attending the workshop, while recognizing the advantages, also explained that a main obstacle to Siyavula use was their lack of access to computers and the Internet in their schools and communities. This speaks to the importance of Siyavula’s longer term strategy in terms of facilitating printing options for teachers who work only in paper-based environments, and in terms of engaging communities of teachers who can access, create and share materials offline or who can find alternative ways of engaging with the Siyavula content (for example by appointing one teacher in their face-to-face workgroup to access and upload content).
Overall, participants indicated that they left workshop with an understanding of Siyavula and open content, their benefits, and a basic understanding of the Connexions platform, which hosts and facilitates use of the Siyavula content. A welcome outcome of the workshop has also been the rich sharing of challenges around curriculum materials among participants, through discussions led by the workshop facilitators. Especially exciting has been the conversations between teacher participants who work in very different teaching contexts—potentially as a way toward collaboration across communities and contexts.
For more information about ISKME’s research on the Siyavula project, please contact Cynthia Jimes, cynthia@iskme.org