Open Educational Resource Term Bank Case Study

Open Educational Resource Term Bank (OERTB) was an initiative by the University of Pretoria (UP), the University of Cape Town (UCT), and the South African Department of Higher Education (DHET). It aimed to establish an online, multilingual term bank, specifically aimed at South African university students. The initiative ran between 2014 and 2017, servicing all eleven official South African languages in various subject areas.  Today, students are still able to use OERTB to access key subject-specific terms and definitions in one of those languages.

The rationale behind the project was that research has shown that students learn better in their mother tongue. As a result, first year students often need academic support because they are unable to attend school in their mother tongue. For students to complete their studies successfully within three or four years, learning about concepts in their mother tongue creates a strong foundation for them, helping them grasp fundamental concepts more easily.

Funded by the South African Government’s Department of Higher Education and Training, project participants included three senior academics from the two universities as joint project leaders,  a term bank manager, editors, as well as external translators and language practitioners. In addition, subject matter experts (SMEs) were an important part of the process. Language practitioners and SMEs worked together to create definitions and add or remove terms.  They provided translation and contextualisation services in subject areas. Some SMEs were lecturers for first years (both retired and still working). In addition, the website was developed by TshwaneDJe and implemented using the tlTerm terminology software and TLex online platform developed by David Joffe and Malcolm MacLeod.

This case study is based on desktop research, an online survey response from one of the project managers, and an online interview with the term bank manager for OERTB.