OpenCourseWare & Education in Kenya

By SHADRACK LAANOI
Published: December 7th, 2008

I once attended a public university in Kenya for a semester during my undergraduate study. The greatest challenge, among others, was access to textbooks at the library. The library, by many standards is modern and huge but the fifth floor was conspicuously devoid of reading material! Many empty shelves.
This got me thinking – how prevalent is the use of OpenCourseWare, free open source textbooks in Kenyan public universities? This is a fantastic knowledge pool that has not yet been fully exploited by instructors. Out with older, expensive texts and in with free, customized online content.
So how can OpenCourseWave improve higher-ed teaching? Eva Amsen has a great article on this that applies on a global scale.
Richard Baraniuk of Rice University started a similar open source project called Connexions which he explained below at TED:

How can OpenCourseWare improve teaching in African institutions of learning?

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