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Sustainable Education through Open Educational Resources Implementation:

Malaysian Perspective

Conference Paper · March 2017

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 International Summit on Employability and Soft Skills (ISESS2017) during 23-25
March 2017 at DIU Campus, Dhaka

Sustainable Education through Open Educational Resources

Implementation: Malaysian Perspective

Ahmad Farid Mohd Jamala, Prof. Dr. Rozhan M. Idrus, Dr. Najwa Hayaati
Mohd Alwi, Dr. Nurkhamimi Zainuddin
a
Centre for Global Open Access Learning - Immersive Technology & Quality
Assurance (GOAL ITQAN), Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)
Corresponding E-mail: ahmadfarid@usim.edu.my

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to discuss the significance of Open

Educational Resources (OER) in sustainable education. Papers and studies
has shown that Malaysians are facing educational challenges in term of
school dropouts, increase in educational cost, regional disparities, and
adult literacy. In addressing these issues hence consorting the idea of
sustaining educational through OER, this paper put forth argument and
discussion supported by secondary data from several studies. Although
further and detail studies are substantive, this paper concluded that there is
relevancy in invoking OER as the agent of sustainable education.

Keywords: Educational Resources, Malaysia Education, Educational

Challenges, Sustainable Education.

Introduction

According to UNESCO (2012), the elements of environment, society and

economy are the founding principles in any sustainable development
programmes. Sustainable development defined by The International
Institute for Sustainable Development1 as “the development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts; (a) the
concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to
which overriding priority should be given; and (b) the idea
of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on
the environment's ability to meet present and future needs”.

1
IISD is an independent, non-profit organisation that provides practical solutions to the
challenge of integrating environmental and social priorities with economic development.
The definition given to sustainable development can be found at
http://www.iisd.org/topic/sustainable-development
One of many international efforts conducted by UNESCO are by
introducing 17 Goals to Transform Our World Initiatives. In September
2015, world leaders have adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals during the UN
Sustainable Development Summit. One of 17 goals introduce is “GOAL 4:
Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong
learning. 10 targets were introduced to be achieved by the year 2030”.
Among others, target that most related to the concept of open educational is
“ensuring all girls and boys have free, equitable and quality primary and
secondary education”.

The idea of Open Educational Resources (OER) was originally introduced

during the First Global OER Forum organised by UNESCO in 2002 (Embi,
2013). The UNESCO forum was attended by various government
representatives with the focus of fostering awareness on OER and
encourage the development and adaptation of it. The basis for OER
encompassing open access teaching, learning and research materials, public
domain, and open licensing as stated in the 2012 Paris OER Declaration2.
The idea of open resources is much tie to the concept of democratisation of
education. Mike Smith, Director of the Hewlett Foundation Education
Program which provided much of the early funding for work in the area of
open educational resources, wrote, “At the heart of the open educational
resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s
knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the World
Wide Web provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use,
and reuse that knowledge” (Smith & Casserly, 2006) and Wiley, Bliss, &
McEwen (2013)

According to Educause (2010), any OER available can be used for

learning, teaching or research activity with a little or no cost required.
Hence, this can be considered as the way forward for education. In
addition, the open access to educational resources make OER as one of the
platform to support equity and flexibility in education. OER are also
flexible to be shared, redistributed, update and modified, as stated in OER
Common FAQ website3 that “The key distinguishing characteristic of OER
is its intellectual property license and the freedoms the license grants to
others to share and adapt it”. This characteristic thus can be shaped as to

2
2012 Paris OER Declaration was release as a result of the 2012 World Open Educational
Resources (OER) Congress on June 2012. This declaration can be view at
http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OE
R%20Declaration_01.pdf
3
The statement from the OER Common FAQ site can be reach at
https://www.oercommons.org/static/staticpages/documents/FAQ-OER-K-12.pdf
keep in line with the new technologies and changes of teaching method as
well as changes in academic disciplines.

Objectives of the Study

The objectives of this paper are:

 To address the role of OER in improving the access to education;
 To show importance of OER in education;
 To propose OER as the agent for sustaining education;

Open Educational Resources in Education

Education is crucial in determining the development of a country and its

people. Hence, it is important to ensure that the educational system is in
tandem with the advancement of Information, Communication &
Technology (ICT) and adoption of sophisticated technology. Emphasising
the importance of OER to access, equity and sustainability of education, the
concept of OER has emerged as having great potential to support
educational transformation, given its principle of the right to education by
all. It is considered a worthwhile option, particularly in the context of
spiralling education costs and the need to make education accessible,
affordable and useable or in other words making it suitable for all tier of
society depending on the needs. It had also become a subject of heightened
interest in policy-making as countries explore its potential to contribute to
improved delivery of education and tackle some of the key problems facing
education systems.

Relating OER to educational sustainability, there were very limited studies

conducted specifically for this purpose. One study that fit the purpose of
evaluating OER in the sustainability of education was conducted by Friesen
(2009) entitled Open Educational Resources: New Possibilities for Change
and Sustainability. This study however shows that OER bring forth both
positive and negative impact to education. In short, Friesen stated that OER
created are lack or absent of learning object. However, upon assessing the
success of OER courses such as MIT Open Courseware4, Friesen conclude
that OER has demonstrate benefits in sustaining education through 4
important component. (a) OER is playing the assistive role on the
progression of education mostly in less developed institutions. (b) OER
also play important role in professional and personal improvement via

4
The success of MIT Open Courseware analyse by Friesen is from MIT OpenCourseWare
2005 program evaluation findings release on June 2006. This document can be access at
https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/global/05_Prog_Eval_Report_Final.pdf
informal learning. (c) OER sustain the need for education from an
institution as OER is normally used or taken as a complete course thus
require certification and accreditation. Finally, (d) OER has shown positive
impact to MIT via the use of OER as assistive tools in teaching and
learning, being the channel for public recognition, and also has raise the
chances of being chosen by prospect.

Despite the many gains of OER, the Open Education initiatives in Malaysia
has a slow starts and modest journey especially due to the lack of
knowledge or broad understanding of OER. Abeywardena, Dhanarajan, &
Lim (2013) found that most Malaysian are not aware of the OER’s benefits.
This is concordance to the study by Friesen (2009) that prescribe the
development of OER in Canada, America, and Europe shows lack of
interest from educational institution evidence by inactive or discontinued
OER projects between 1999 and 2009. However, the awareness about OER
in Malaysia is gradually growing especially among academics that
appreciate the integration of pedagogy and technology. Specific to
Malaysia, a study conducted by Abeywardena, Dhanarajan, & Lim (2013)
shows that 70 percent of the respondents mentioned that they had used
OER in their teaching at some point during their career though the use of
OER is claimed as not widespread.

Malaysia Education and Open Educational Resources (OER)

The growth of open educational resources in Malaysia tertiary education

were mostly pioneered by private universities, such as by Wawasan Open
University (WOU) Malaysia. Prior to OER growth by WOU in 2010, the
movement to increase educational accessibility is through distance
education. This movement initially aims to increase productivity and
employability of citizens by providing formal form of education to adult
learners. At the same time, this initiative also operated in tandem with the
efforts of the government to reduce the flow of Malaysian Ringgit abroad
from the expenditure of sending students abroad. Open education also
works as mechanism to channel the flow of students into Malaysia, while
positioning Malaysia as a provider of international education. As stated by
Ali, Fadzil, and Kaur (2006), “Expanding the access to higher education
locally is a good idea to not worsen the current economic slowdown and
restrict the outflow of local currency.

According to Ali, Fadzil, and Kaur (2006) the initiative of distance

education was started by private institutions like Stanford College, Raffles
College, Malaysian Correspondence College, Adabi College and Federal
College which provide place for student that being left out by the
government funded schools. This paper also describes that the initial
distance programmes was initiated based on the extended on-campus
programs. The first set of programmes was offered by Universiti Sains
Malaysia back in 1971 with 11 bachelor programmes. 19 years later, in
1990 Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) started its distance programme
with the offering of diploma. This offering was then subsequent by
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and Universiti Malaya (UM) in
1993, and Universiti Putra Malaysia in 1994. Ali, Fadzil, and Kaur (2006)
added that the movement of open education in other public universities was
started in or after 1995 based on the directive from the Ministry of Higher
Education with the objective to increase the number of students in public
institutions via distance education. Distance education then was being
offered by private higher education by the like of Multimedia University in
1997, and University Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR) in 1998. Subsequently
in 1998, a consortium named Multimedia Technology Enhancement
Operations Sdn Bhd or METEOR was established by 11 public universities
with the aim to further enhance the visibility of distance education in
Malaysia. METEOR has proposed the setting up of Open University in
1999, and the effort materialise in 2001 with the establishment of
Universiti Terbuka Malaysia (Open University Malaysia).

The concept of open and distance education was further developed with the
establishment of Asia e University in 2002, and Wawasan Open University
(WOU) in 2006. As stated earlier, the emergence of private university with
focus on online education has spark the desire to promote OER. With this
vision in hand, Wawasan Open University (WOU) has initiated OER
movement in Malaysia under the Institute of Research and Innovation (IRI)
during mid-2010. WOU has created OER website namely OER Asia, as a
forum to share information, opinions, research studies regarding OER
(Embi, 2013). As part of its OER adoption strategies, WOU has developed
Policy on Open Licence (2012)5 with CC BY-NC-SA as the license for all
selected courseware developed the University. The WOU Policy on Open
Licence has a quality assurance process in place for development of
learning materials to be released as OER. Menon (2014) stated that use of
OER significantly reduced the course development time, and therefor cost
savings for the University.

5
WOU Policy on Open Licence (2012) can be downloaded via online at
http://weko.wou.edu.my/Open-Licence-
Policy/?action=common_download_main&upload_id=75
Overview to the Malaysia Education System

According to the Ministry of Education Malaysia (MOE) website6, as for

July 2016 there were 7,772 primary schools and 2,408 Secondary Schools
with total of 4,873,928 students’ enrolment and 421,828 teachers. Extracted
data from MOE website were summarize in Table 1. Apart from the
primary and secondary education, there were 200,684 students enrolled for
preschool. Students with special needs are provided education opportunities
in special schools and in integration programmes in regular schools. As of
2006, there were 32 national special educational schools, two vocational
secondary schools, and 1,282 Integrated Special Education Programmes
(special classes in mainstream schools); the total enrolment for these
programmes was 29,169 students (MOE, 2008).

Table 1: Number of Schools, Teachers and enrolment for Primary and

Secondary Schools in 2016

Level Number of Number of Student

Schools Teachers Enrolment
Primary 7772 239,850 2,685,403
Secondary 2408 181,978 2,188,525
Total 10180 421,828 4,873,928

Referring to report by UNESCO on World Data on Education 7th Edition,

2010/117, in 2008 there were 2,091 (government assisted) academic and 90
technical secondary schools, and in addition 40 Majlis Amanah Rakyat
(MARA) junior science colleges. The total enrolment was 2,241,654
students in academic school, 69,006 in technical schools, and 26,752
students in junior science colleges. The number for sixth form and
matriculation was 105,165 students for the same year, of whom 65.9%
were girls.

The statistical report by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia

(MOHE) for the year 2015, 1,236,164 enrolments were recorded for all
level of higher education with 54.6 percent female. In total 540,638
students’ enrolment were recorded in Public Universities alone of which 62
6
Statistic for number of school, teachers and students’ enrolment is open access and can
be obtained from http://www.moe.gov.my/index.php/en/statistik-kpm/statistik-bilangan-
sekolah-murid-guru
7
UNESCO on World Data on Education 7th Edition, 2010/11 for Malaysia can be
obtained from
http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Publications/WDE/2010/pdf-
versions/Malaysia.pdf
percent were female. 580,928 students’ enrolment recorded in Private
Universities with 49.3 percent female. 96,069 enrolments were recorded in
Polytechnics with 48.1 percent were female, and 18,529 enrolments into
community colleges with 41.7 percent female (MOHE, 2015). The
summary of these data is as Table 2.

Table 2: Number of enrolment for Public Universities, Private Universities,

Polytechnics, and Community Colleges in 2015

Categories Male % Female % Total

Public
205,384 38.0% 335,254 62.0% 540,638
University
Private
294,620 50.7% 286,308 49.3% 580,928
University
Polytechnic 49,885 51.9% 46,184 48.1% 96,069
Community
10,794 58.3% 7,735 41.7% 18,529
College
Total 560,683 45.4% 675,481 54.6% 1,236,164

Malaysia Education Challenges and OER

School Dropout

As a country becomes increasingly developed, the reach and, presumably,

the quality of education and attainment of education outcomes rise along
with income levels. Malaysia seems to fit this trend with many key
education indicators showing tremendous improvement since the country
achieved independence in 1957. At that time, over half of the population
had no formal schooling, 6 percent had some secondary level schooling,
and only 1 percent had attained a post-secondary education. In 2011
however, the enrolment rate at primary level had shot up to 96 percent and
enrolment at secondary level was at 86 percent, both of which are
commendable. With the rate, assumable to representing the access to
formal among Malaysian, this rate of dropout8 should also be considered in
the equation (Patel, 2014). Table 3 shows the dropout rate in Malaysia
spanning back to 1995.

8
Dropout rate defined as pupil leaving the government school system before completing
full cycle of primary or secondary education.
Table 3: The dropout rate in Malaysia for the year 1995 - 2013.

Year GDP per Dropout rate (percent)

capita (RM) Primary Secondary
1995 13,672 1.21 5.52
2005 12,776 0.23 2.53
2010 17,717 0.16 2.65
2012 27,925 0.19 1.93
2013 33,540 0.1 1.96
Source: Educational Planning and Research Division (EPRD), Malaysia
Ministry of Education (MOE) and World Bank Data (Patel, 2014)

However, Table 3 does not consider students who leave the mainstream
schooling system during critical transitions phases (such as the move from
Year 6 to Form 1) 9. There is lack of information about the students that
leave the system and where they end up. This indicated that the actual cost
of dropouts is impossible to calculate.

A survey was conducted by Wan Jan (2013) with the aim to understand
issues that parents perceive as the reasons for a child dropping out. The
study revealed that 23 percent of dropouts cannot afford the fees and
expenses, 11% need to work to support the family, and 9 percent need to
take care of household members. The remaining dropouts had a lack of
interest in school (72 percent), poor academic performance (23 percent),
were expelled from school (4 percent), had no transport to school (1
percent) and other related reasons (1 percent) as stated in the Figure 1.

9
Malaysia Education System require students to seat for Primary School Assessment Test
/ Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) during their Year 6 Primary School prior to
Form 1 Secondary School enrolment. Grading of the students during enrolment is based
on the results of the UPSR. Read more on this at
http://jpwpkl.moe.gov.my/index.php/soalan-lazim
 Lack of interest for school 72%

Cannot afford the fees and expanses 23%

Poor academic performance 23%

Need to work to support the family 11%

Need to take care of family members 9%

Expelled from school 4%

No transport to school 1%

Others 1%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Fig. 1: Reasons parents give for their children dropping out of school

OER in Addressing School Dropout

While it is difficult to obtain official rates and data on dropouts, the

education system does need to re-visit this problem. The study by Wan Jan
(2013) shows that dropouts who had begun working showed some
indication of the continuation of the poverty cycle. They tried to
supplement the family income by leaving school before completing a full
secondary education, and many ended up working in the same unskilled
occupations as the head of the household. Parents of these children viewed
vocational and technical education positively. These education options
should be explored further to boost skill and income level. One of the other
possible options to be explored is the concept of open and accessible
education.

Referring to Figure 1, categorising the 23 percent who cannot afford the

fees and expenses, the 11 percent who need to work to support the family,
the 9 percent who need to take care of the family, and the 1 percent without
the transport to school, as the force-dropouts-group, the amount is totalling
up to staggering number of 44 percent. This number nearly half the reason
parents give for their child dropping out. With the assumption of these
force-dropout students are willing to continue their education should be
given the opportunities, OER will be most beneficial. While there are no
real data to support the willingness of these 44 percent to continue their
education, the idea of increasing the channel to education will give them a
better option in pursuing their formal teaching and learning process,
especially with the advantages of openness and free resources offered by
OER.

Increasing Educational Cost

The process of the publishing of textbook packages for primary schools in

Malaysia is very much based on the requirements of the Integrated
Curriculum for Primary Schools / Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Rendah
(KBSR). In the report by Ghani Azmi and Abdul Rahman (2008), the
pricing of the textbooks mainly covers three main costs namely (a)
initial costs, i.e. Expenditures incurred in the preliminary stage
of production and publishing, which may include photocopying
and translation costs; (b) pre-printing costs, i.e. all expenses incurred from
the construction of manuscript to the filming stage of publishing; and (c)
the printing costs. To depict the high cost of text book production, Table 4
shown the cost of text book supply for the year 2008/09 and 2015/16.

Table 4: Text book supply cost for 2009 and 2016

Textbook Supply Total Cost

17.36 Million copies
2008 for 127.2 Million
Copies BTB BCS
2009
Printed 1.6 Million 16 Million
29.23 Million copies
2015 for Copies BTB BCS 202.3 Million
2016 Printed 11.2 Million 18.08 Million

In general, the information in the exact number of textbooks development,

production and distribution cost is relatively limited. Sourcing from a news
report by a local news publisher, Utusan Malaysia supply of textbook in
2015 for use in 2016 was reported at a total of 29,234,080 copies with the
cost of Malaysian Ringgit (RM) 202, 250,442. The ministry also said that it
involves the printing of new issues textbooks or buku teks terbitan baharu
(BTB) and the reprints issues or buku teks cetakan semula (BCS), totalling
up to 11,159,035 and 18,075,045 copies respectively (Ahmedullah, 2016).
Based on a figure from a news report by Berita Harian in 2008, Abdul
Rahman, Alias, Siraj & Hussin (2013) stated that almost 17.36 million
textbooks were printed for primary and secondary schools to meet the
needs of 2009 schooling session. This total includes 1.6 million of the new
issues textbooks (BTB) with the cost of RM10.7 million and 16 million
textbooks for the reprinted issues (BCS) for the cost of RM86.5 million. In
addition, RM10 million were also provided to address unforeseen needs
such as damage caused by natural disasters textbooks. With the overall
supply of textbooks costing RM127.2 million. The increase from RM127,
200,000 for 2009 to RM202, 250,442 in 2016 is a staggering amount. Most
probably the increase in cost aided by the fact beginning the 2007 and 2008
Budgets, fees for major examinations are abolished in stages while every
student, regardless of the family’s income and background, is now entitled
to textbook loans under the Textbook Loan Scheme (Ghani Azmi & Abdul
Rahman, 2008).

The cost of education is not only borne by the government, but also by
parents (or carers/guardians). As stated by Rasiah and Hassan, (2011),
these costs were borne whether indirectly through taxes or directly through
personal expenditure to support the day-to-day schooling activities. These
include school fees, school uniform, books and equipment, pocket money
for meals, school trips and other charges. From an analysis conducted by
Ismail, Awang, and Mohd Noor (2016) with participations of more than
400 respondents, the total cost for pre-university per year was about RM11,
996.16, while for university education, the average cost per year is about
RM 64, 131.00.

OER in Addressing Educational Cost

Effective teaching and learning needs an effective delivery system.

Textbooks are no longer considered as an important element of knowledge
acquisition. Learning activities are done through electronic media, whereby
information and communication technology (ICT) has become the main
means of imparting knowledge and gathering information in higher
education. ICT has changed students’ learning behaviour, helping to move
from content-centred curricula to competency-based curricula, and from
teacher-centred to student-centred forms of delivery (Oliver, 2002). In
addition, according to Adnan (2008), students prefer to photocopy books
because the cost is cheaper than buying the textbooks. They can save
almost 75 percent of the cost of buying imported books and 50 percent if
buying local books. Adnan (2008) also stressed out that the main reason
that they opt to photocopy the books is due to insufficient funds. The result
from the survey also supports this statement in which 76.4 percent of the
respondents decided not to buy a textbook because it was too expensive.

From this overall result analysis, Malaysia has high potential in

implementing OER, given the condition that the awareness and acceptance
of students and academician on OER being address accordingly. The focus
here is reducing or even eliminating the distribution cost of educational
materials or the textbook. Wiley, Green, & Soares (2012) also mentioned
that the cost of having a 250-page book transcribed by hand is about USD
($) 250. The cost of printing that same book with a print-on-demand
service is about $5. The cost of copying an online version of that same
book is about $0.0008. The cost of shipping either the written or printed
book is about $5. The cost of distributing an electronic copy of the book
over the Internet, however, is approximately $0.0007. Putting the whole
notion of cost in perspective by quoting back the definition of OER from
Educause (2010), “OER are any resources available at little or no cost that
can be used for teaching, learning, or research”. The emphasis on cost is an
important component of the definition, which comes from the need to make
public funded resources made available to the public for free. As stated by
Wiley, Green, & Soares (2012), education is a matter of sharing, and the
open educational resources approach is designed specifically to enable
highly efficient and affordable sharing.

Regional Disparities

An article by Krimi, Yusop, and Hook, 2010 shows that the average
monthly household income for Malaysian is RM3, 249 in 2004, with the
highest mean monthly income was recorded in Selangor at RM5, 175 while
Kelantan recorded the lowest at RM1, 829 for the same year. Based on this
figure, the study concluded that the incidence of poverty remained high in
the less developed states of Sabah, Terengganu and Kelantan. Putting gap
of economic disadvantage caused by regional disparities into the
perspective of education, the evidence from a study conducted by Barros,
Mendonca, and Shope, 1993 indicates that regional disparities in quality of
education are strongly correlated with regional disparities in the level of
educational attainment.

Although the problem of regional disparities is a global educational issue,

persistence efforts to reduce in access to quality educational materials
should always be put in place. The Malaysian Government has taken major
steps to curb this problem including improvising the infrastructure,
attending the rural school with more and better qualified teachers. With all
the combine initiatives, yet, the results on national exams indicate still
showing significant gap in test scores both across and within geographical
areas (UNESCO, 2015), suggesting inequalities to education as the causal
of the variant in scores. As suggested in the UNESCO report, “In ensuring
the quality of education, focus should be given, among others, to the
number of teachers, option teachers and students' enrolment, as well as the
physical structure of the school”.
OER in Addressing Regional Disparities

One aspect that lacking and should be put forth in the UNESCO, 2015
report is broadening the use of open and free access educational materials
in classroom. The integration of OER in classroom can be one of the
principle measures to correct disparities across geographical areas.

The use of OER in classroom can be supported by the many effort from the
government in greater adoption and diffusion of ICT to improve capacities
in every field of education. These efforts include the development of
Malaysian Smart School system, the usage of internet in school,
computerisation programme in schools, electronic book project, and
training session to the stakeholders. Narrowing down to training session
alone, according to Chan (2002), more than 3,000 teachers and about
260,000 students benefited from the training session provided by the
Curriculum Development Centre which was started as far back as 1992.
The programme focussed exclusively on ICT literacy at first, but starting
from the year 2000, the emphasis has shifted to getting the teachers to use
ICT in the classroom during lessons. This program had been introduced to
636 primary and secondary schools, most which were rural schools. A
summary of the efforts in fusing ICT in Malaysia education landscape are
as shown in Figure 2. Do note that timeframe is true to the year stated but
not specified exact to the date of implementation.

Fig. 2: Timeline showing the effort to fuse ICT into the Malaysia education
landscape composed from the summarisations of several papers and
studies.
Adult Literacy

Malaysia Labour Force Survey (LFS) was used to measure the Malaysian
Literacy Rate, with the definition of literacy10 stated as “having attended or
currently attending school”. Adult literacy rate refers to the individuals age
15 years and above with assumption that those who have attended basic
education should be literate. Sourcing from UNESCO Institute for Statistic
website11, the level of illiteracy in Malaysian adult are shown in the Table 5.
According to the same website, population age 15-24 years in Malaysia for
the year 2015 was at 6,021,000, while the total population in the same year
recorded at 30,894,000.

Table 5: Illiteracy level among Malaysian adult in 2015

Population Age Male Female Total To

population
15-24 years 46,456 43,473 89,929 1.49%
15 years and older 431,498 796,547 1,228,045 3.98%

Malaysian government has certainly mobilised programmes to eradicate

illiteracy of which focus on the poor and other disadvantaged groups.
Indigenous or orang asli are among the target group with a programme
called Adult Class for Indigenous Parents or Kelas Dewasa Ibu Bapa
Orang Asli dan Peribumi (KEDAP). The programme was started in 2008
and to-date KEDAP classes have reached 18,195 with an administrative
costing up to RM35, 800,000 (UNESCO, 2015).

OER in Adult Literacy

Referring back to the Adult Class for Indigenous Parents conducted by the
Malaysian government, suggesting onsite OER via offline low
technological tools can be a viable alternative. As a study conducted by
Camara, Shrestha, Abdelnour-Nocera, and Moore (2010) has proved that
the implementation of WikiReaders (as an offline mobile access to digital
content) in rural sub-Saharan farming communities to address the Bridging
the Global Digital Divide (BGDD) does not need to be expensive. Despite
the success, the authors also suggest caution and attention on the socio-
technical implications of the offline access to digital content. There should

10
Definitions of literacy as provided by the Commonwealth Education Online can be
access at http://www.cedol.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/14-Definitions-of-literacy.pdf
11
UNESCO Institute for Statistic website can be access at
http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/MY
be a proper understanding on the level of acceptance to technology prior to
the implementation. Bringing back the scope to Malaysian perspective,
UNESCO, 2015 report also stated that since 2000, The Department of
Community Development or Jabatan Kemajuan Masyarakat (KEMAS) has
conducted computer literacy classes for 26,122 rural adults. The
establishment of the Village Information Centre or Medan Info-Desa (MID
is a right step in the right direction to serve as a base to prepare the rural for
an offline technological approach, in addition to its principle purpose in
bridging the digital gap between the rural and urban. This report also stated
that a research team from the Institute of Teacher Education Malaysia
found the impact of KEDAP shown positive result, but also indicate that
the distance and cost of travelling was some of the factor that might hinder
the continuity and the effectiveness of KEDAP.

OER Implementation in Support of Malaysian Digital Maturity Index

With all the usefulness of OER and technological advancement in

education, it is important to consider the readiness and the digital maturity
among ICT user. One study was carried out by Azman, Salman, Abdul
Razak, & Hussin (2014) aimed at determining the level of digital maturity
among ICT-Mobile Phone (smart phone and Internet) users by looking at
the intensity of usage of smart phone applications (apps) and functions and
the level of the indispensability of internet and its related characteristics
and functions. A nationwide survey was conducted among 2,124
respondents based on the population ratio of the main ethnic groups in
Malaysia. The study found that Malaysians have reached a satisfactory
level of digital maturity with regard to ICT usage, meaning that the
standard of digital maturity among the users and society is encouraging and
this can be seen when the mobile users adopt various apps such as
WhatsApp, Skype, Waze and others which are beneficial to ease their life
routine. The findings also show that more than 70 percent of the
respondents in Malaysia are using the mobile apps and downloading the
apps from Google Play Store for various purposes.

Relating the aspiration of OER to the satisfactory level of digital maturity,

arguably we can indicate that most Malaysian are ready with the concept of
digitisation and the democratisation of content. The substantiation may be
existed in term of the category of the content. With no confirmation that the
content downloaded or viewed by Malaysian are educational-based, there is
no validity to assume that Malaysians, especially students have reach the
satisfactory level of digital maturity index, thus the readiness to embrace
the concept of OER in their teaching and learning regime.
Conclusion

With education sustainability through free and open access resources in

mind, the characteristic of OER that allow reuse, redistributed, and
reconstruct of content is a definite helps to this aim. While it is undeniable
that the lack of quality control, and reviewing making it a target for
negative academic activities, the impact of OER in levelling the playing
field should be credited. A proper assessment and fact-check prior to any
utilisation of OER will goes a long way in putting OER as a medium for
the democratisation of education.

Broadly the there is a need to create more awareness about OER in

Malaysia. As several available policies, such as Malaysian e-Learning
Policy or Dasar e-Pembelajaran Negara (DePAN) and Code of Practice
for Open Distance Learning (COPPA ODL) were already in place with
some support for OER, it may be useful to release a set of guidelines.
While many universities in Malaysia are already member of Open
Education Consortium, full understanding of the open licenses are not
common. OER is a very recent development in education. It requires a
huge paradigm shift and attitude change and this is a much bigger
challenge than introducing a new tool or knowledge. Many in education do
not understand the potential of OER and feel that it threatens their
ownership of intellectual property. It takes some time to understand that
open licenses, such as Creative Commons licenses.

From a social and pedagogical perspective, OER could support lifelong

learning and personalised learning. Therefore, it is important to explore
how learning takes place within the framework of OER. Learning is a
social process based on ongoing communication, exchange of ideas and
opinions and the reconsideration and reworking of study results. In this
context, teaching and learning material is not necessarily created by one
teacher or even by a group of teachers at all; learners should be actively
involved in the process of designing curricula and syllabi and in the
creation of knowledge (Yuan, MacNeill & Kraan, 2008). With the raising
of awareness, active engagement from the education communities, and a
proper quality assurance, it is not impossible for the development of OER
will implies prominent support for an open and dynamic curriculum,
personalise learning, lifelong learning, modular learning, and sustainable
education.
Acknowledgements

We thank Commonwealth of Learning for funding and the initiation of this

project. We also thank Ministry of Education Malaysia for supports.

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