Digital Campus is working with teams of faculty members, researchers on learning and engineers to develop embedded courses designed to improve the educational experience in higher education in Ethiopia.

In emerging countries, teachers are often saddled with old – and often irrelevant – materials. The question we address is how can the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement remove barriers to accessibility of world-class knowledge at the higher-education level?.

Open courseware is an example of disruptive technology. Open Educational Resources encourage critical thinking, the use of multiple sources to check accuracy, and problem solving. Several studies have shown that students learn a full semester’s worth of material in half the time when the online coursework is added and more students stick with the class, too.

Thousands of pieces of free educational material — videos and podcasts of lectures, syllabuses, entire textbooks — have been posted in the name of the open courseware movement. But how to make sense of it all? . We think O.E.R. can be the most cost-effective way to improve education in emerging countries and we’d like to see continued growth and expansion. We are aware that now we have the technology that enables us to go back for a personalized educational experience with interactive engagement.

At Digital Campus, we are preparing  projects that will track and analyze how open education may enhance learning, and examine how it is changing the future of education in Ethiopia.