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Localizing OER in Afghanistan: Developing a multilingual digital library for Afghan teachers
Oates, Lauryn and Hashimi, Jamshid

PublishedApril 2016
JournalOpen Praxis
Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages 151-161
Publisher2016 Open Education Global Conference Selected Papers
CountryPoland

ABSTRACT
The Darakht-e Danesh (‘knowledge tree’) Online Library is the first open educational resource (OER) initiative in Afghanistan, established to enhance teacher subject-area knowledge, access and use of learning materials, and to foster more diverse teaching methodologies in order to improve learning outcomes in Afghan classrooms. This paper describes our experience developing this local language digital library, buildings its responsiveness to our audience of users as we progressed, customizing both the interface and the resources for Afghanistan’s education environment. We innovated methods to devise relevant local content, localized usability, developed different access models to reach different populations of users, integrated impact measurement, and opted to openly license material in the library’s collection. By making digital educational content open from the first introduction of digital repositories of learning objects in Afghan languages, we have an opportunity to establish the principle of openness and to promote open practices in teacher professional development in Afghanistan. The paper aims to share lessons on how OER can be customized for multilingual, resource-scarce contexts drawing from our experience to date in Afghanistan, and seeking to contribute to the literature on localization and multilingual OER.

Keywords Afghanistan · language · localization · OER · open access · teacher education · teacher professional development · teaching and learning materials

Published atKrakow
ISSN2304-070X
Other number2
RefereedYes
Rightsby/3.0
URLhttp://www.openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/288
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar



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