Employability and Open Education Resource Policies development: critical reflections from selected SADC Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Distance education has been widely accepted by many higher education institutions (HEIs) and the public, although a certain section still thinks that ODeL is suspect to poor quality offerings and outputs. Although there is no any evidence suggesting that face-to-face (f2f) delivery mode is much more effective and reliable than ODeL, some studies have demonstrated that ODeL may indeed suffer from poor quality tuition and outcomes, given the limited opportunities and resources accorded to the students and the system as a whole. The implications of such perceptions are that some teachers, students, parents and employers have often avoided and/or undermined ODeL by not recognising its qualifications and/or the graduates even when such graduates come from the same universities. Such stratified treatment has further implications on students’ motivation, self-actualisation and their ability to become creative, critical and imaginative thinkers, and/or on their chances to secure competitive employment once they graduate. These events are happening when the majority of developing countries are failing to grapple with problems of underemployment, unemployment and/or overemployment on one hand, and the proliferation of Neo-Darwinism on the other hand, often emanating from what Bourdieu termed conceptual and capital currency differences. Since under-employment and unemployment debates are gaining momentum for both f2f and ODeL delivery modes, it is incumbent upon ODeL managers that they design employability and Open Educational Resources (OERs) policies which can be utilised to guide the students, teachers and employers alike by providing them with relatively normative instruments for testing, measuring and assessing employment prospects for the students. Given the growing poverty levels in Africa, her unique dispositions, and inconsistencies in the way employment can be secured, enjoyed and measured, there is need for employability and OERs policies that are specifically designed for Africa’s conditions. Such policies would then guide educational offerings both at national and individual HEIs levels based on common grounds and shared understandings. While this study emanated from different workshops that were funded by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), as a consultant, it also emerged from contextual analyses that were done between September end and early October 2023 within the SADC Region. The studies utilised document analyses and various theoretical propositions such as those by Pierre Bourdieu, Reay Diane, Sen and Nussbaum amongst other justice theoreticians. This topic attracted my attention because, as a proven ODeL scholar and enthusiast, I wanted to explain and understand the role of ODeL policies and their implications within depraved HEIs contexts in Malawi and elsewhere.