This book explores the state of open education in terms of self-directed learning on the African continent. Through a combination of conceptual, systematic literature review and empirical chapters, readers will get a research-based impression of these aspects in this area. Apart from presenting existing wider trends regarding open education, this book also reports on effective open practices in support of self-directed learning.

Daniel Burgos works as a Full Professor of Technologies for Education & Communication and Vice-rector for International Research, at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR). He holds a UNESCO Chair on eLearning and the ICDE Chair in Open Educational Resources. He is the Director of the Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED). He has implemented more than 60 European and Worldwide R&D projects, and published over 180 research papers and over 25 books. He is a Professor at An-Najah National University (Palestine), an Adjunct Professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL, Colombia), an Extraordinary Professor at North-West University (South-Africa) and a Visiting Professor at Coventry University (United Kingdom). He works as a consultant for United Nations (UNECE), European Commission & Parliament, and the Russian Academy of Science. He holds degrees in Communication (PhD), Computer Science (Dr. Ing), Education (PhD), Anthropology (PhD), BusinessAdministration (DBA), Theology (PhD), Management (PhD), Open Science and STEM (PhD) and Artificial Intelligence (MIT, postgraduate).

Jako Olivier is the holder of the UNESCO Chair in Multimodal Learning and Open Educational Resources and is a professor of Multimodal Learning in the Faculty of Education at North-West University. His research, within the Research Unit Self-Directed Learning, focuses on self-directed multimodal learning, open educational resources, multiliteracies, blended and e-learning in language classrooms as well as multilingualism in education. He currently holds a Y rating from the National Research Foundation and was awarded the Education Association of South Africa's Emerging Researcher Medal in 2018. In addition to recently editing a book on self-directed multimodal learning he has published numerous articles and book chapters at the national and international levels, and he also acts as a supervisor for postgraduate students.