Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources
The term open educational resources (OER) emerged as a result of many years of digital educational content production, advances in information and communications technology and a commitment on the part of educational institutions around the world to ensuring access to education for all. In 2002 the term “open educational resources” was proposed at the UNESCO Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries. New legal frameworks such as Creative Commons licences finally gave the creators of learning objects a tool which they could apply to their own works, allowing others to legally reuse their material. Thus learning objects could now carry clear and easy to understand rules for how they could be reused by other educators. At the time, the definition proposed for OER by UNESCO was:


 * The open provision of educational resources, enabled by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for noncommercial purposes. (UNESCO, 2002:24)

This definition was further refined by Atkins et al. (2007):


 * 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 repurposing 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. (Atkins et al., 2007:4)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was the first university to formally release a selection of its own teaching materials to the public via the internet. Since then, many leading institutions have followed suit. Some institutions have released their entire course materials, and some have offered a selection of educational materials. Academic institutions are now contributing scholarly resources to the global knowledge commons made possible by the internet and Web 2.0 tools. The OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC), originally started in the United States, has had significant impact on the movement. The consortium currently has 186 member institutions of higher learning from 45 different counties around the world

Open institutional repositories of OER are now available from leading instructions around the world. Institutions such as Johns Hopkins specialise in resources for public health, whilst others contain a range of objects in a variety of disciplines. In addition to institutional repositories, content-specific repositories have emerged for specialised media. Websites in this category include the Creative Commons image collections on Flickr for images Curricki for lesson plans; Flat World Knowledge for textbooks; Academic Earthfor video; and the World Lecture Projectfor audio. These open repositories of OER give educators a means of sourcing content or inspiration for their own lessons.

OER Repositories
OER Commons OpenCourseWare Consortium Search Curriki

Open Content Repositories
Creative Commons Multimedia Search Flickr Image Search

OER Textbooks
Flat World Knowledge Openstax College Connexions

Useful Readings
Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge Edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar Forward by John Seely Brown

[http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/6/6d/OER_Briefing_Paper_CETIS_without_recommendations_with_cover_page_.pdf Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education. Yuan, L., MacNeill, S. & Kraan, W. (2008)]

V2
The emergence of open educational resources (OER) in higher education is part of the much larger social movement towards ‘opening up’ what was previously ‘closed’ to all except a limited number of people who paid for access to use information and services. Initially OER was understood as sharing specific 'educational resources', but we argue that it also may include the underlying pedagogical ‘practices’.

The OER movement follows in the wake of open source software and open access publishing initiatives and is fast transforming the way in which teaching and learning materials are created, shared and appropriated. Drawing on the concept of the ‘Knowledge Commons’ and the principle of sharing knowledge for greater good, the OER movement has the potential to play a substantial role in disrupting the traditional flow of information and transforming how institutions source and share their pedagogical practices.

In this presentation we will introduce the exciting terrain of OER, identify the social, technical, legal, and financial motivators that are enabling the movement, and demonstrate how it has the potential to change academic practice and create new avenues for collaboration. This workshop will expose participants to the theory behind the open education movement as well as give them a hands on opportunity to explore resources related to their practice.

V1
Open Educational Resources (OER) are defined as “materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone” (Downes, 2011). Flickr, iTunes U or YouTube, all based on the idea of sharing content openly, can also provide excellent resources for teachers and learners. This half-day workshop will be a focused learning session, which will offer participants the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge of Open Education Resources (OERs). Examples of OER learning content include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, etc. Examples of open tools include: software to support the development, use, reuse and delivery of learning content, including searching and organisation of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and online learning communities. Themes: Theories that underpin openness as a key principle in education Options for finding, selecting, and building on existing open educational resources (OER) Processes for creative commons licensing Using of OERs in teaching and/or course development, including sharing resources and/or practices in post-secondary education (e.g. through peer review of resources)