9 April 2025 (The presentation is available here).
The SACOMM stream for Communication Education and Curriculum Development presented a webinar by Dr. Jako Olivier from the Commonwealth of Learning in Canada. Dr. Olivier examined how the integration of Generative AI into the creation of open educational resources (OERs) raises ethical and practical questions about the openness and value of these resources. The presentation addressed issues around the creation of OERs that are open, inclusive and relevant.
Dr Olivier is an Adviser: Higher Education at the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver, Canada and an Adjunct Professor of Open Education at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. He is a member of the advisory board of the Open Education for a Better World initiative. Previously, he was a professor at the North-West University, where he was also the first UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources. He is rated as an established researcher by the National Research Foundation, and his research and advocacy work relate to open educational resources, open and distance learning, self-directed learning, micro-credentials, localisation and multilingualism in open education.
11 April 2024
The SACOMM stream for Communication Education and Curriculum Development presented a webinar by Prof. Karen Ferreira-Meyers from the University of Eswatini as speaker. She addressed questions such as: how AI offers opportunities to rethink teaching and learning; how to use AI in assessment without damaging academic integrity; and how to design assessment tasks that include or exclude the use of AI.
Prof. Karen Ferreira-Meyers
Prof. Karen Ferreira-Meyers has been working for the University of Swaziland (now University of Eswatini) since September 1993. She was promoted to Associate Professor in April 2018. She has published a monograph, edited several journals and books, published more than 100 research papers and a similar amount of book reviews, translated both fiction and non-fiction work. She collaborates with international colleagues on research as well as learning/teaching material design and development projects, and regularly facilitates workshops. Her interests include ODeL, open education and open schooling (she is involved in two World Bank projects on open schooling, one for Senegal and one for the Sahel region), artificial intelligence, authentic assessment, language teaching and learning, autofiction and autobiography, crime and detective fiction. She is also a keen lifelong learner. She led the Certificate in Online Teaching for Educators project between 2021 and 2023, a 6-week online programme offered by the Institute of Distance Education geared to equip educators with key competencies in online teaching.