As the evaluation partner for the Siyavula initiative, ISKME has been conducting research on Siyavula’s activities and those of its teacher users to increase understanding of factors that contribute to the creation, use and localization of Siyavula’s resources in the South African context. As part of this research, ISKME seeks to inform the ways that Siyavula (and open educational resources more generally) can support existing and new practices toward enhanced teaching and learning.

 So far, the ISKME team research has conducted a baseline survey of teachers, observations of Siyavula’s professional development workshops,  interviews with workshop facilitators and participating teachers, as well as school site visits and examination of analytics data on the use of Siyavula’s online resources. High level findings from this work, specifically around the benefits of incorporating Siyavula to the teaching and learning process, include the following: 

• Siyavula resources reported by teachers as integral to the teaching process. Teachers indicated their use of (or plans to use) Siyavula to find materials to fill existing gaps and meet curriculum needs, localize and adapt materials to match learners’ needs, build a searchable archive of effective resources, and communicate with other teachers around curriculum challenges and approaches.
• Siyavula’s online communities (workgroups) reported as a mechanism for collaborative problem solving and knowledge sharing. One teacher, for example, reported that she started an online Siyavula workgroup called Literature Circle so that she could share her approach to teaching literacy with other teachers. Another teacher reported an interest in participating in a Siyavula workgroup to get ideas from other teachers around classroom behavior problems.
• Siyavula as a way to support teachers as subject matter experts. Teachers indicated an interest in sharing their own resources or materials with other Siyavula users as a way to disseminate the body of work they have created and to elicit feedback from other teachers on that work. One teacher also reported that Siyavula, by providing access to resources in a specific topic area, allowed for the control and access needed to fully explore her own subject area.

 Although the findings above are promising, continued data collection and analysis will explore the emergent themes further—as well as other themes specifically around what participants view as the challenges to the Siyavula model.  ISKME’s next steps include analysis of a recent survey conducted with curriculum advisors in South Africa to explore the potential alignment of their roles to the Siyavula model. ISKME’s final data collection activity will be a survey of participating teachers in mid-July to assess the impact of Siyavula on their teaching practices as well as supports needed to further incorporate Siyavula into their classrooms.

 These and other findings were presented by ISKME at the Open Education Resources 10 (OER10) Conference held at Clare College, Cambridge, UK from March 22-24, 2010 (http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer10/).

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