Jako Olivier is a professor in Multimodal Learning in the Faculty of Education at the North-West University (NWU), South Africa and he holds the UNESCO Chair on Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources. In 2018 he received the Emerging Researcher Medal from the Education Association of South Africa and he is an NRF-rated researcher. His research, located within the NWU’s Research Unit for Self-directed Learning, is focused on open pedagogy, self-directed learning, multimodal learning, open educational resources, multiliteracies, blended learning and online multilingualism. As an activist for openness in education he is an active member of the Creative Commons Chapter of South Africa and leads the newly established Network of OER and Multimodal Self-Directed Learning in Southern Africa (NOMSA).