The case study of Free High School Science Texts (FHSST)—conducted by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education—highlights several practices associated with the successes and challenges encountered by the project as it worked to create freely available, high quality science and math textbooks for South African schools. The study revealed that a central issue of importance for FHSST was the ability to facilitate a community of volunteers who continuously contribute content, and that this in turn necessitated ongoing technology and practice improvements—all toward the aim of making the content creation process as volunteer-centric as possible.

Furthermore, because a collaborative work culture that inspired a sense of urgency and shared vision played a large role in engaging and sustaining volunteer contributions, the case of FHSST also points to the necessity of developing both online and face-to-face mechanisms within projects that can facilitate such a culture.

On the whole, the findings of the FHSST case study imply that an important aspect of project sustainability involves the implementation of practices that replicate the characteristics of open educational resources themselves: namely, those that are collaborative and peer-based, and that invite continuous improvement by stakeholders. For other OER projects, this indicates the potential necessity of developing community-centered technologies, processes, and cultures that can support experimentation, self-assessment, and adaptation, while maintaining and continuously reinforcing a clear sense of overall mission.

To download the full report, click here. The first remix of the report has been created by FHSST's founder, Mark Horner, and will be posted to this node in May 2008.

For more information about the FHSST case study, contact Cynthia Jimes at Cynthia@iskme.org.

tags: education fhsst open-educational-resources peer-production case-study

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