African Veterinary Information Portal Case Study

The field of veterinary science in Africa has been characterised by under-resourced faculties and schools and a lower quality education in many contexts because of a lack of equipment and teaching resources. OER Africa began engaging with the University of Pretoria’s (UP’s) Faculty of Veterinary Science since 2008 to support the concept of open educational resources (OER). A formal partnership began in 2012 where the focus was to:

• Conceive an educational model that embraced technology and ‘openness’,
• Provide awareness of OER to staff within the wider faculty,
• Construct AfriVIP, an online repository of quality veterinary teaching and learning resources, as an initial mechanism to achieve the vision of a blended open learning environment.

In February 2014, AfriVIP was launched containing predominantly continuous professional development (CPD) resources. The portal was part of a broad vision to share intellectual property under an open licence. At inception, it was also seen as a test case to explore the potential for wider adoption of OER and open licences across the university and at veterinary faculties/schools in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

The overarching aim of the project was to improve the quality of veterinary science education in Africa through collaboration in the development, sharing, and re-use of educational and research resources under open licences, to enrich both African and global veterinary science knowledge networks and educational programmes.

This report is based on desktop research, and interviews with the OER Africa project manager involved in AfriVIP at the time, the AfriVIP website developer, and two academic staff members (Profs Holm and Coetzer) from the Faculty of Veterinary Science at UP who were intimately involved in the project.