Page - 57 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

60 S.AffounehandZ.N.Khlaif differentstagesintheeducationsystem.Inaddition,theyfosteredcollaborativework among teachers at schools indifferentdistricts. Palestinian students, public education teachers and staff at universities useOER to acquire new knowledge and skills related to their fields of practice and study, since it can reduce the costs of training and save them time and effort. Because of political issues in Palestine, theMoE is using open resources to train teachers in Gaza, providing training objects and using Zoom, Skype and other tools (Khlaif, 2018). 4.2.2 ChallengesofOER AdoptingOERindaily life isnotwithoutproblems,becauseitaffects thetraditional rules, cultures, feelings andmodes of learning in both public andhigher education (Hood&Littlejohn, 2017).Moreover, the reuse of OER is challenging for users becausetheseobjectsarestoredinvariousrepositorieswithoutageneraldescription of their contentorwithoutmetadata (Wang&Towey,2017).ThequalityofOERis anemerging issue in thePalestiniancontext,because teachersandeducatorsupload theirobjectsand thesystemaccepts theseobjectswithoutpeer review,oranypublic scrutiny (Okada,Mikroyannidis,Meister,&Little, 2012). There are also concerns about sustainability andbusinessmodels (Algers, 2015;Downes, 2007), anda lack of trust in academic institutions and amongeducators that use them to createOER (Clements&Pawlowski, 2012). According to our experience and based on the Palestinian context, a number of competencies are needed for exploring the tools to enable learning byusingOER, to adapt content to societal rules (e.g., clear vision, a clear policy and legislation regarding public education aswell as higher education), to identify learning goals and to gather the related content in the institutions.All these should be considered toensure theethicaluseofOER. In Palestine, the term ‘open education’ was usually used to refer to Al Quds OpenUniversity (QOU),whichwasestablished in1990 inorder tooffer education to Palestinian studentswho have suffered from closures and sieges andwho have been prevented from traveling abroad due to Israeli military instructions. Despite all the challenges thatPalestinians facedue to thepolitical andeconomic situation, they continue to value their educations and consider them tools for a better life. QOUwasoneof theearliest experiments inopeneducation, following themodelof OpenUniversity in theUKandAustralia. Educationwas offered throughdifferent campuses and using textbooks and other resources. My work at QOU for many years, trying to develop new open practices through introducingmore technology into teaching and learning, shows that there aremanydifferent practices that could becollectedunderthisumbrella.Theuniversitywasfirstestablishedtoprovideadult educationand thenmoved to serveyoungstudentswhohave feweropportunities to attendregularuniversities,eitherforeconomicreasonsorbecausetheyobtainedlow scoresonsecondary school exams.