Open educational resources
Encyclopedia
Open educational resources (OER) are digital materials that can be re-used for teaching, learning, research and more, made available for free through open licenses, which allow uses of the materials that would not be easily permitted under copyright
alone. As a mode for content creation and sharing, OER alone cannot award degrees nor provide academic or administrative support to students. However, OER materials are beginning to get integrated into open
and distance education
. Some OER producers have involved themselves in social media
to increase their content visibility and reputation.
OER include different kinds of digital assets. Learning content includes courses, course materials, content modules, learning object
s, collections, and journals. Tools include software that supports the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content, searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities. Implementation resources include intellectual property licenses that govern open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content. They also include materials on best practices such as stories, publication, techniques, methods, processes, incentives, and distribution.
:
One report, the OLCOS Roadmap 2012, notes that there is no established definition of OER and prefers to identify three core attributes:
between the global North and the global South
, and to make a contribution to the development of less advanced economies.
was coined in 1994 by Wayne Hodgins and quickly gained currency among educators and instructional designers, popularizing the idea that digital materials can be designed to allow easy reuse in a wide range of teaching and learning situations.
The OER movement originated from developments in open and distance learning (ODL) and in the wider context of a culture of open knowledge
, open source
, free sharing and peer collaboration, which emerged in the late 20th century. OER and Free/Libre Open Source Software
(FLOSS), for instance, have many aspects in common, a connection first established in 1998 by David Wiley
, who introduced the concept of open content
by analogy with open source
.
The MIT OpenCourseWare
project is credited for having sparked a global Open Educational Resources Movement after announcing in 2001 that it was going to put MIT
's entire course catalog online and launching this project in 2002. In a first manifestation of this movement, MIT entered a partnership with the University of Utah
, where assistant professor of instructional technology David Wiley
set up a distributed peer support network for the OCW's content through voluntary, self-organizing communities of interest.
The term "open educational resources" was first adopted at UNESCO
's 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries.
In 2005 OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) launched a 20-month study to analyse and map the scale and scope of initiatives regarding “open educational resources” (OER) in terms of their purpose, content, and funding. The report Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources, published in May 2007, is the main output of the project, which involved a number of expert meetings in 2006.
In September 2007, the Open Society Institute
and the Shuttleworth Foundation
convened a meeting in Cape Town to which thirty leading proponents of open education
were invited to collaborate on the text of a manifesto
. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration
was released on 22 January 2008, urging governments and publishers to make publicly funded educational materials available at no charge via the internet.
, came out of Rice University
starting in 1999. In contrast to the OCW projects, content licenses are required to be open Creative Commons
Attribution only license. The hallmark of Connexions is the use of a custom XML format NXML], designed to aid an enable mixing and reuse of the content.
Other initiatives derived from MIT OpenCourseWare
are China Open Resources for Education
and OpenCourseWare in Japan.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium, founded in 2005 to extend the reach and impact of open course materials and foster new open course materials, counted more than 200 member institutions from around the world in 2009.
One of the first OER resources for K-20 education is Curriki
. A nonprofit organization, Curriki provides an Internet site for open source curriculum (OSC) development, to provide universal access to free curricula and instructional materials for students up to the age of 18 (K-12). By applying the open source process to education, Curriki empowers educational professionals to become an active community in the creation of good curricula. Kim Jones serves as Curriki's Executive Director.
In August 2006 Wikieducator
was launched to provide a venue for planning education projects built on OER, creating and promoting open education resources(OERs), and networking towards funding proposals. Its Wikieducator's Learning4Content project builds skills in the use of MediaWiki
and related free software technologies for mass-collaboration in the authoring of free content and claims to be the world's largest wiki training project for education. By 30 June 2009 the project facilitated 86 workshops training 3,001 educators from 113 different countries.
issues, as most educational content is protected under conventional copyright
terms that must be honored. Creative Commons
, an organisation that provides ready-made licensing agreements that are less restrictive than the "all rights reserved" terms of standard international copyright
, is a "critical infrastructure service for the OER movement."
US universities and foundations such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
, which was the main financial supporter of open educational resources in the early years and has spent more than $110 million in the 2002 to 2010 period, of which more than $14 million went to MIT
. The Shuttleworth Foundation
, which focuses on projects concerning collaborative content creation, has contributed as well. With the British government contributing £5.7m, institutional support has also been provided by the UK funding bodies JISC
and HEFCE
.
UNESCO
is taking a leading role in "making countries aware of the potential of OER." The organisation has instigated debate on how to apply OER in practice and chaired vivid discussions on this matter through its International Institute of Educational Planning
(IIEP). Believing that OER can widen access to quality education, particularly when shared by many countries and higher education institutions, UNESCO also champions OER as a means of promoting access, equity and quality in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
.
In more fundamental criticism, doubts have been cast on the altruistic motives typically claimed for OER, and the very project has been accused of imperialism
in that the creation and dissemination of knowledge according to the economic, political and cultural preferences of highly developed countries for the use of less developed countries is alleged to be a self-serving imposition.
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
alone. As a mode for content creation and sharing, OER alone cannot award degrees nor provide academic or administrative support to students. However, OER materials are beginning to get integrated into open
Open education
Not to be confused with Open educational resourcesOpen education is a collective term that refers to educational organizations that seek to eliminate barriers to entry. Such institutions, for example, would not have academic admission requirements. Such universities include Open University in...
and distance education
Distance education
Distance education or distance learning is a field of education that focuses on teaching methods and technology with the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a traditional educational setting such as a classroom...
. Some OER producers have involved themselves in social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
to increase their content visibility and reputation.
OER include different kinds of digital assets. Learning content includes courses, course materials, content modules, learning object
Learning object
A learning object is "a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective". The term is credited to Wayne Hogins when he created a working group in 1994 bearing the name though the concept was first described by Gerard in 1967...
s, collections, and journals. Tools include software that supports the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content, searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities. Implementation resources include intellectual property licenses that govern open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content. They also include materials on best practices such as stories, publication, techniques, methods, processes, incentives, and distribution.
Other Definitions
The following definition of OER has been proposed by the William and Flora Hewlett FoundationWilliam and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Reddington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1967. The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to support educational and cultural institutions and to advance certain social and...
:
OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
One report, the OLCOS Roadmap 2012, notes that there is no established definition of OER and prefers to identify three core attributes:
- that access to open content (including metadata) is provided free of charge for educational institutions, content services, and the end-users such as teachers, students and lifelong learners;
- that the content is liberally licensed for re-use in educational activities, favourably free from restrictions to modify, combine and repurpose the content; consequently, that the content should ideally be designed for easy re-use in that open content standards and formats are being employed;
- that for educational systems/tools software is used for which the source code is available (i.e. Free Software
Free softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
/Open SourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software) and that there are open Application Programming Interfaces (open APIs) and authorisations to re-use Web-based services as well as resources (e.g. for educational content RSS feeds).
Aspirations
The aspirations of OER proponents range from a desire to reshape the captive market of textbook publishers to the aim of creating "a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge." High hopes, especially, have been voiced for OER to alleviate the digital divideDigital divide
The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...
between the global North and the global South
North-South divide
The north–south divide is a socio-economic and political division that exists between the wealthy developed countries, known collectively as "the north", and the poorer developing countries , or "the south." Although most nations comprising the "North" are in fact located in the Northern Hemisphere ,...
, and to make a contribution to the development of less advanced economies.
History
The term learning objectLearning object
A learning object is "a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective". The term is credited to Wayne Hogins when he created a working group in 1994 bearing the name though the concept was first described by Gerard in 1967...
was coined in 1994 by Wayne Hodgins and quickly gained currency among educators and instructional designers, popularizing the idea that digital materials can be designed to allow easy reuse in a wide range of teaching and learning situations.
The OER movement originated from developments in open and distance learning (ODL) and in the wider context of a culture of open knowledge
Open Knowledge
Open Knowledge is a term used to denote a set of principles and methodologies related to the production and distribution of knowledge works in an open manner...
, open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
, free sharing and peer collaboration, which emerged in the late 20th century. OER and Free/Libre Open Source Software
Floss
Floss may refer to:* Dental floss, used to clean teeth* Embroidery thread, machine or hand-spun yarn for embroidery* Fairy floss or candyfloss, alternative names for cotton candy* Rousong, i.e. meat floss-Computing:...
(FLOSS), for instance, have many aspects in common, a connection first established in 1998 by David Wiley
David A. Wiley
David A. Wiley is an Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University. He is also Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge and founder of the Open High School of Utah...
, who introduced the concept of open content
Open content
Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
by analogy with open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
.
The MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
project is credited for having sparked a global Open Educational Resources Movement after announcing in 2001 that it was going to put MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's entire course catalog online and launching this project in 2002. In a first manifestation of this movement, MIT entered a partnership with the University of Utah
University of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, where assistant professor of instructional technology David Wiley
David A. Wiley
David A. Wiley is an Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University. He is also Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge and founder of the Open High School of Utah...
set up a distributed peer support network for the OCW's content through voluntary, self-organizing communities of interest.
The term "open educational resources" was first adopted at UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
's 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries.
In 2005 OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) launched a 20-month study to analyse and map the scale and scope of initiatives regarding “open educational resources” (OER) in terms of their purpose, content, and funding. The report Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources, published in May 2007, is the main output of the project, which involved a number of expert meetings in 2006.
In September 2007, the Open Society Institute
Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...
and the Shuttleworth Foundation
Shuttleworth Foundation
South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth established the Shuttleworth Foundation in January 2001. There have been various iterations of the Foundation and how it invests in social innovation...
convened a meeting in Cape Town to which thirty leading proponents of open education
Open education
Not to be confused with Open educational resourcesOpen education is a collective term that refers to educational organizations that seek to eliminate barriers to entry. Such institutions, for example, would not have academic admission requirements. Such universities include Open University in...
were invited to collaborate on the text of a manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration
Cape Town Open Education Declaration
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration is a major international statement on open access, open education and open educational resources. It emerged from a conference on open education hosted in Cape Town on 14 and 15 September 2007 by the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Open Society Institute...
was released on 22 January 2008, urging governments and publishers to make publicly funded educational materials available at no charge via the internet.
Some OER Initiatives
A parallel initiative ConnexionsConnexions
Connexions is a global repository of educational content provided by Rice University. The entire collection is available free of charge, and students and learners alike can explore all the content they desire....
, came out of Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
starting in 1999. In contrast to the OCW projects, content licenses are required to be open Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution only license. The hallmark of Connexions is the use of a custom XML format NXML], designed to aid an enable mixing and reuse of the content.
Other initiatives derived from MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
are China Open Resources for Education
China Open Resources for Education
The China Open Resources for Education is a non-profit organization. Its mission is to promote closer interaction and open sharing of educational resources between Chinese and international universities, which CORE envisions as the future of world education.CORE aims to provide Chinese...
and OpenCourseWare in Japan.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium, founded in 2005 to extend the reach and impact of open course materials and foster new open course materials, counted more than 200 member institutions from around the world in 2009.
One of the first OER resources for K-20 education is Curriki
Curriki
Curriki is a nonprofit organization that is building an Internet site for open source curriculum development, to provide universal access to free curricula and instructional materials for students up to the age of 18 . By applying the open source process to education, Curriki empowers educational...
. A nonprofit organization, Curriki provides an Internet site for open source curriculum (OSC) development, to provide universal access to free curricula and instructional materials for students up to the age of 18 (K-12). By applying the open source process to education, Curriki empowers educational professionals to become an active community in the creation of good curricula. Kim Jones serves as Curriki's Executive Director.
In August 2006 Wikieducator
WikiEducator
WikiEducator is an international online community project for the collaborative development of learning materials, which educators are free to reuse, adapt and share without restriction. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 and is supported by the non-profit Open Education Resource Foundation...
was launched to provide a venue for planning education projects built on OER, creating and promoting open education resources(OERs), and networking towards funding proposals. Its Wikieducator's Learning4Content project builds skills in the use of MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
and related free software technologies for mass-collaboration in the authoring of free content and claims to be the world's largest wiki training project for education. By 30 June 2009 the project facilitated 86 workshops training 3,001 educators from 113 different countries.
Licensing
Open educational resources are inextricably bound up with intellectual propertyIntellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
issues, as most educational content is protected under conventional copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
terms that must be honored. Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
, an organisation that provides ready-made licensing agreements that are less restrictive than the "all rights reserved" terms of standard international copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
, is a "critical infrastructure service for the OER movement."
Institutional support
A large part of the early work on open educational resources was funded by well-endowedFinancial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
US universities and foundations such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Reddington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1967. The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to support educational and cultural institutions and to advance certain social and...
, which was the main financial supporter of open educational resources in the early years and has spent more than $110 million in the 2002 to 2010 period, of which more than $14 million went to MIT
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
. The Shuttleworth Foundation
Shuttleworth Foundation
South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth established the Shuttleworth Foundation in January 2001. There have been various iterations of the Foundation and how it invests in social innovation...
, which focuses on projects concerning collaborative content creation, has contributed as well. With the British government contributing £5.7m, institutional support has also been provided by the UK funding bodies JISC
Joint Information Systems Committee
JISC is a United Kingdom non-departmental public body whose role is to support post-16 and higher education and research by providing leadership in the use of ICT in learning, teaching, research and administration...
and HEFCE
Higher Education Funding Council for England
The Higher Education Funding Council for England is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in the United Kingdom, which has been responsible for the distribution of funding to Universities and Colleges of Higher and Further Education in England since...
.
UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
is taking a leading role in "making countries aware of the potential of OER." The organisation has instigated debate on how to apply OER in practice and chaired vivid discussions on this matter through its International Institute of Educational Planning
UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning
The International Institute for Educational Planning is an arm of UNESCO created in 1963 in Paris, France.- Mission :IIEP's mission is to strengthen the capacity of countries...
(IIEP). Believing that OER can widen access to quality education, particularly when shared by many countries and higher education institutions, UNESCO also champions OER as a means of promoting access, equity and quality in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
.
National and US State Programs
- US - Washington State's Open Course Library Project is a collection of expertly-developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – for 81 high-enrolling college courses. 42 courses have been completed so far, providing faculty with a high-quality option that will cost students no more than $30 per course.
- BangladeshBangladeshBangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
is the first country to digitize a complete set of textbooks for grades 1-12. Distribution is free to all. - UruguayUruguayUruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
sought up to 1,000 digital learning resources in a Request For Proposals (RFP) in June 2011. - South Korea has announced a plan to digitize all of its textbooks and to provide all students with computers and digitized textbooks.
- The California Learning Resources Network Free Digital Textbook Initiative at high school level, initiated by former Gov. Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
. - The Shuttleworth FoundationShuttleworth FoundationSouth African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth established the Shuttleworth Foundation in January 2001. There have been various iterations of the Foundation and how it invests in social innovation...
's Free high school science texts for South Africa - Saudi Arabia had a comprehesive project in 2008 to digitize and improve the Math and Scinece text books in all k-12 grades.
- Saudi Arabia start a project in 2011 to digitize all text books other than Math and Science.
Criticism
The OER movement has been accused of insularity and failure to connect with the larger world: "OERs will not be able to help countries reach their educational goals unless awareness of their power and potential can rapidly be expanded beyond the communities of interest that they have already attracted."In more fundamental criticism, doubts have been cast on the altruistic motives typically claimed for OER, and the very project has been accused of imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
in that the creation and dissemination of knowledge according to the economic, political and cultural preferences of highly developed countries for the use of less developed countries is alleged to be a self-serving imposition.
See also
- Defining OER
- Distance educationDistance educationDistance education or distance learning is a field of education that focuses on teaching methods and technology with the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a traditional educational setting such as a classroom...
- Cape Town Open Education DeclarationCape Town Open Education DeclarationThe Cape Town Open Education Declaration is a major international statement on open access, open education and open educational resources. It emerged from a conference on open education hosted in Cape Town on 14 and 15 September 2007 by the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Open Society Institute...
- Free educationFree educationFree education refers to education that is funded through taxation, or charitable organizations rather than tuition fees. Although primary school and other comprehensive or compulsory education is free in many countries, for example, all education is mostly free including...
- IMS GlobalIMS GlobalIMS Global Learning Consortium is a global, nonprofit, member organization that strives to enable the growth and impact of learning technology in the education and corporate learning sectors worldwide...
- JISC
- Learning objectLearning objectA learning object is "a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective". The term is credited to Wayne Hogins when he created a working group in 1994 bearing the name though the concept was first described by Gerard in 1967...
s - Open access (publishing)
- Open contentOpen contentOpen content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....
- OpenCourseWareOpenCourseWareOpenCourseWare, or OCW, is a term applied to course materials created by universities and shared freely with the world via the internet. The movement started in 1999 when the University of Tübingen in Germany published videos of lectures online in the context of its timms initiative...
- Open educationOpen educationNot to be confused with Open educational resourcesOpen education is a collective term that refers to educational organizations that seek to eliminate barriers to entry. Such institutions, for example, would not have academic admission requirements. Such universities include Open University in...
- OpenLearnOpenLearnOpenLearn is the UK Open University's contribution to the Open Educational Resources project. It is part-funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.OpenLearn is a member of the OpenCourseWare Consortium .-History:...
- Open source curriculumOpen source curriculumAn open source curriculum is an online instructional resource that can be freely used, distributed and modified. OSC is based on the open source practice of creating products or software that opens up access to source materials or codes...
- Open textbookOpen textbookAn open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online by its author or through a non-profit or commercial open-licensed publisher. The open license sets open textbooks apart from traditional textbooks by allowing users to read online, download, or sometimes print the book at no additional...
s - Question and Test Interoperability specificationQTIThe IMS Question and Test Interoperability specification defines a standard format for the representation of assessment content and results, supporting the exchange of this material between authoring and delivery systems, repositories and other learning management systems. It allows assessment...
- Support Centre for Open Resources in Education (SCORE)
- Virginia Open Education FoundationVirginia Open Education FoundationVirginia Open Education Foundation is a not-for-profit 501 corporation dedicated to bringing curriculum and educational content resources to the K-12 students of the Commonwealth of Virginia through open education...
- WikiEducatorWikiEducatorWikiEducator is an international online community project for the collaborative development of learning materials, which educators are free to reuse, adapt and share without restriction. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 and is supported by the non-profit Open Education Resource Foundation...
- WikiversityWikiversityWikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project, which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than...
External links
- UNESCO OER Wiki
- UNESCO WSIS Platform of Communities Open Educational Resources (OER)
- World Bank Zunia OER discussion
- Open Courseware Consortium
- Creative Commons
- OER Commons
- Open Educational Resources, William and Flora Hewlett FoundationWilliam and Flora Hewlett FoundationThe William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Reddington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1967. The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to support educational and cultural institutions and to advance certain social and...
- UK Open Educational Resources programme
- Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective, European Union funded project
- XPERT
- Automatic OER attribution service
- OER Africa - Understanding OER
- Open-Of-Course
- OER Handbook
- Free to Learn Guide by Hal Plotkin. 2010.
- Support Centre for Open Resources in Education
- The Librarian Chick catalog of free digital education resources
- The California Free Digital Textbook Initiative at high school level
- The Shuttleworth Foundation's Free high school science texts
- College Open Textbooks
- College Open Textbooks Community
- OpenCourseWare Consortium at university level
- MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
- Waveplace OERs for Haiti
- Commonwealth of Learning
- Open Education Resource Foundation
- LeMill Web community for finding, authoring and sharing open educational resources in multiple languages
- Peace Corps World Wise Schools
- Math Links - educators sharing interesting resources around the teaching and learning of mathematics
- OER Recommender 110,000 listings
- Bangladesh National e-Content Repository in Bangla. Story: PM opens e-content repository. 30,000 teachers, 148 government organisations and 50 local and foreign non-government organisations. 50,000 pages, planned to increase to 5,000,000.
- e-Book ::. ই-বুক জগতে স্বাগতম in Bangla. Story: PM opens online version of textbooks Access to Information (A2I) Project of the PM’s Office and the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) jointly transformed 33 primary level and 73 secondary level textbooks into e-books in collaboration with the UNDP.
- Florida Standards - resources - collection of links to reviewed OERs - some are commercially created, some are open
- One Laptop Per ChildOLPC Australia Moodle server
- NPTEL by IITs and IISc (India)