Abstract
There has been a growing interest in recent years in making educational content freely available. Terms such as ‘open content’ and ‘open educational resources’ have gained currency, and there is now a well-established international community of those interested in producing, using and researching open educational resources (OER). This chapter gives an overview of the growth of the OER movement and summarises some of the issues, highlighting key references.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
- 2.
Definition on the Hewlett Website, http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/OER/
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2008/12/grant1408.aspx for details of the call and associated documentation
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
These are available online at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2085
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer.aspx for a list of the projects and links to the project Websites.
- 33.
See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer for a list of the projects and links to the project Websites.
- 34.
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
- 39.
- 40.
- 41.
- 42.
- 43.
- 44.
- 45.
- 46.
- 47.
- 48.
- 49.
- 50.
- 51.
- 52.
- 53.
- 54.
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
- 58.
- 59.
- 60.
- 61.
- 62.
- 63.
- 64.
- 65.
- 66.
- 67.
- 68.
- 69.
- 70.
- 71.
- 72.
- 73.
- 74.
- 75.
- 76.
- 77.
- 78.
- 79.
- 80.
- 81.
- 82.
- 83.
- 84.
- 85.
- 86.
- 87.
- 88.
- 89.
- 90.
- 91.
- 92.
- 93.
- 94.
- 95.
- 96.
- 97.
- 98.
- 99.
- 100.
- 101.
- 102.
- 103.
- 104.
- 105.
- 106.
- 107.
- 108.
- 109.
- 110.
- 111.
- 112.
- 113.
- 114.
References
Atkins, D. E., Seely Brown, J., & Hammond, A. L. (2007). A review of the Open Educational Resource movement: achievements, challenges and new opportunities. Report to the William and Hewlett Foundation. Available online at http://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdf. Accessed 7 Sept 2011.
Borgeman, C. L., Abelson, H., Dirks, L., Johnson, R., Koedinger, K., Linn, M. C., Lynch, C. A., Oblinger, D. G., Pea, R. D., Salen, K., Smith, M., & Azalay, A. (2008). Fostering learning in the networked world: The cyberlearning opportunity and challenge. Report of the NSF task force on cyberlearning. Available online at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08204/nsf08204.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
Hylén, J. (2006). Open Educational resources: Opportunities and challenges. Proceedings of Open Education. Available online at http://www.knowledgeall.net/files/Additional_Readings-Consolidated.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
Iiyoshi, T., & Kumar, M. S. V. (2008). Opening up education: The collective advancement of education through open technology, open content, and open knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Keller, P., & Mossink, W. (2009). Reuse of material in the context of education and research, SURFdirect, The Netherlands. Available online at http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/090706surfcc_reuse_materiaal_def.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
Lane, A. (2006). From pillar to post: Exploring the issues involved in re-purposing distance learning materials for use as Open Educational Resources (Openlearn working paper). Milton Keynes: The Open University. http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?docid=9724. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
McAndrew, P. (2006). Motivations for Openlearn: The Open University’s open content initiative. Openlearning workshop paper. Paper presented at the THe OECD experts meeting on Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?docid=8816. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
McAndrew, P., Santos, A., Lane, A., Godwin, S., Okada, A., Wilson, T., Connolly, T., Ferreira, G., Buckingham Shum, S., Bretts, J., & Webb, R. (2009). Openlearn research report 2006–2008. Milton Keynes: The Open University.
Oblinger, D., & Lombardi, M. M. (2008). Common knowledge: Openness in higher education. In T. Iiyoshi & M. S. V. Kumar (Eds.), Opening up education: The collective advancement of education through open technology, open content and open knowledge (pp. 289–400). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
OECD. (2007). Giving knowledge for free – The emergence of open educational resources: OECD. Available online at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
UNESCO. (2002). Open Educational Resource open content for higher education. Final forum report. Available online at http://www.unesco.org/iiep/eng/focus/opensrc/PDF/OERForumFinalReport.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2011.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Appendix: The Broader OER Landscape
Appendix: The Broader OER Landscape
United Kingdom
-
OpenlearnFootnote 30
-
SCOREFootnote 31
-
UK—JISC/HEA OER phase 1 programmeFootnote 32
-
UK—JISC/HEA OER phase 2 programmeFootnote 33
-
POCKETFootnote 34
Ireland
-
NDLRFootnote 35
Holland
-
OpenERFootnote 36
-
WikiwjsFootnote 37
Germany
-
AkleonFootnote 38
-
KELDAmetFootnote 39
-
CampusContentFootnote 40
-
PodcampusFootnote 41
-
Zentrale für Unterrichtsmedien (ZUM)Footnote 42
-
Dual Mode Technische Universität DarmstadtFootnote 43
-
MatheVitalFootnote 44
-
SkriptenforumFootnote 45
Austria
-
EducaNextFootnote 46
-
eLibrary ProjektFootnote 47
Switzerland
-
GITTAFootnote 48
Brazil
-
UnisulVirtualFootnote 49
North America
-
CCCOER/CCOTFootnote 50
-
BC campusFootnote 51
-
MIT OpenCourseWareFootnote 52
Finland
-
EDU.FiFootnote 53
-
AVO-SOMETUFootnote 54
-
Le MillFootnote 55
Estonia
-
Estonia National NetworkFootnote 56
Portugal
-
INTERACTICFootnote 57
-
Casa das CiênciasFootnote 58
Community Sites
-
Peoples open access initiativeFootnote 59
-
The peer to peer universityFootnote 60
-
WikieducatorFootnote 61
-
ConnectionsFootnote 62
-
MerlotFootnote 63
OER Research Groups
-
Organisation for economic cooperation and development (OECD)Footnote 64
-
OER CommonsFootnote 65
-
Open eLearning Content Observatory OLCOSFootnote 66
-
Open Learning network (OLNET)Footnote 67
International Agencies
-
OER AFRICAFootnote 68
-
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL)Footnote 69
-
UNESCO: open training platformFootnote 70
Translation Organisations
-
Opensource opencourseware prototype systemFootnote 71
-
China open resource for education (CORE)Footnote 72
-
Creative commonsFootnote 73
-
Universia.netFootnote 74
Emerging Institutions
-
Technologica de MonterreyFootnote 75
-
University of the western capeFootnote 76
-
Universiade do sul de santa catarina: unisulFootnote 77
Established OER Projects
-
A number of funders (such as the Hewlett Foundation, Shuttleworth and UNESCO) have had and continue to have a significant influence on the nature of OER initiatives, both in terms of the funding they provide and also through other forms of promotion and support. Examples of different types of initiatives include EADTU/MORIL,Footnote 78 the EU-funded FP7 programmes, for example, ICOPER,Footnote 79 STELLARFootnote 80 and the OpenScout initiative,Footnote 81 investigating various aspects of OER movements. The nature of these different initiatives is a combination of a number of factors:
-
The nature of the type of funding which supports them
-
The vision and motivation behind them
-
The nature of the organisation or organisations involved (face-to-face/distance, subject-based, institutionally or nationally focused, single- or multi-partnered)Footnote 82
-
The following alphabetical listing outlines a selection of these varied projects sourcedFootnote 83:
-
Anadolu University, Yunus Emre Lifelong Open Learning Portal,Footnote 84 Turkey offers 149 content-rich courses free through its Yunus Emre education portal. The courses include the following components: e-books, e-courses, e-TV, e-audio books and e-practice.
-
Athabasca University—Open University, Canada.Footnote 85 The University aims to remove the barriers of time, space, past educational experience and, to a great degree, level of income. Individualised study courses allow learners to learn at their own pace. Flexible instruction frees learners from the demands of specified class times and rigid institutional schedules. For undergraduate individualised study courses, there are no admissions deadlines; learners may enrol year-round.
-
Budapest Open Access Initiative, Hungary.Footnote 86 The Budapest Open Access Initiative aims to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the Internet.
-
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, Global.Footnote 87 The Berlin Declaration promotes the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider.
-
Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment—BELLE, Canada.Footnote 88 BELLE was a $3.4 million shared-cost project (2002) funded under the CANARIE Learning Program. BELLE’s objective was to develop a prototype educational object repository.
-
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI).Footnote 89 Carnegie Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a collection of ‘cognitively informed’, openly available and free online courses and course materials that enact instruction for an entire course in an online format. The vision is that the courses developed and delivered through the OLI project will be used by instructors and students in colleges and universities throughout the world as well as individuals seeking education who are not affiliated with an institution.
-
Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Global.Footnote 90 The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Two online databases of learning content provide support to commonwealth countries free of charge. Institutions or governments can use these repositories to access a range of free learning content.
-
Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research (DRIVER).Footnote 91 DRIVER aimed to establish a cohesive, pan-European infrastructure of digital repositories for both researchers and the general public. It set out to build an advanced infrastructure for the future knowledge of the European Research Area.
-
European Schoolnet (EUN), Europe.Footnote 92 European Schoolnet (EUN) is a consortium of 28 ministries of education in Europe. EUN provides major European education portals for learning, teaching and collaboration and leads the way in bringing about change in schooling through the use of new technology.
-
Japanese OpenCourseWare Alliance (JOCW), Japan.Footnote 93 The JOCW is the consortium of Japanese universities that have been providing OCW in Japan.
-
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digital Repositories, United Kingdom.Footnote 94 JISC has funded a range of initiatives around the creation and use of digital resources. This has included significant work on digital repositories.
-
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Higher Education Academy (HEA) Open Educational Resources programme, United Kingdom.Footnote 95 Between April 2009 and April 2010, the JISC and the HEA funded a series of pilots and activities to promote the open release of learning resources. Projects were required to make a significant amount of existing learning resources freely available online, licensed in such a way to enable them to be used and repurposed worldwide. Twenty-nine projects were funded in total, around three themes (individual researcher, institutionally based and subject based).
-
Jorum, United Kingdom.Footnote 96 Jorum is funded by the JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee). Jorum is a collaborative venture in UK higher and further education to collect and share learning and teaching materials, allowing their reuse and repurposing and standing as a national statement of the importance of creating interoperable, sustainable materials. Users can access the learning and teaching materials (which cover a range of subject areas) to enhance their students’ learning experience. Materials range from single assets (documents, images, diagrams) to more comprehensive learning objects (interactive units and content packages). Jorum accepts learning and teaching resources across all subject areas for both higher and further education in the UK.
-
IIEP-UNESCO Wiki of OER repositories, Global.Footnote 97 IIEP-UNESCO hosts a wiki that offers a list of several portals, gateways and repositories. It offers a list of links to OER initiatives, resources and tools. It offers access to a selection of approximately 30 repositories of open learning objects, mostly at the university level.
-
ide@s, North America.Footnote 98 This is an initiative by the University of Wisconsin to identify, evaluate, catalogue and align to the Wisconsin education standards resources that are already on the Internet, such as lesson plans and reference materials. These resources are then made available from the ide@s search engine for prekindergarten to higher education and adult education.
-
Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX), North America.Footnote 99 The Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX) is an electronic warehouse of ideas, examples and resources that support student learning for the state of Arizona Maricopa community colleges. These resources include lessons, techniques, methods, activities and assignments.
-
Monterey Institute for Technology and Education National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), North America.Footnote 100 NROC is a library of high-quality online courses for students and academics in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement.
-
National Learning Network (NLN) Materials, United Kingdom.Footnote 101 Working in partnership with subject experts and commercial developers, BECTA’s (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) the NLN Materials Team commissioned and managed the development of further education e-learning materials for use in virtual learning environments. The materials cover the UK post-16 further education curriculum and were designed to be fitted easily into existing teaching.
-
Open Archives Initiative (OAI).Footnote 102 The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. OAI has its roots in the open access and institutional repository movements.
-
OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW), Global.Footnote 103 The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organisations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.
-
ParisTech, France.Footnote 104 ParisTech is a collective entity that includes 12 of the most prestigious French institutes of education and research.
-
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) (MERLOT), North America.Footnote 105 MERLOT provides free and open resources designed primarily for academics and students of higher education. MERLOT is a catalogue of online learning materials, peer reviews, learning assignments, and user comments, organised by discipline into specific discipline communities and created to help academics enhance their instruction, and that anyone can use for free.
-
OER Commons, North America.Footnote 106 OER Commons is a learning and teaching network offering a broad selection of high-quality Open Educational Resources that are freely available to use online and, in many cases, to adapt and support individualised learning and teaching practices.
-
Open Courseware Directory (OCD).Footnote 107 The Open Courseware Directory is an annotated listing of publicly available courseware (lecture notes, handouts, slides, tutorial material, exam questions, quizzes, videos, demonstrations, etc.) from the world’s universities, colleges and other educational institutions worldwide.
-
OpenCourseWare Finder, North America.Footnote 108 The OCW Finder aggregates materials across several collections: MIT OCW, Utah State University, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OCW, Tufts University OCW, Foothill De-Anza SOFIA and Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative.
-
SchoolNet, Canada.Footnote 109 In English and French, SchoolNet is a partnership with the provincial and territorial governments, the education community and the private sector in Canada, which promotes the effective use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in learning.
-
Textbook Revolution, Global.Footnote 110 Textbook Revolution is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. The approach is to bring free textbooks together in one place.
-
The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (CETL), United Kingdom.Footnote 111 The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in reusable learning objects developed, shared and evaluated learning objects. The aim was to promote innovation in pedagogical design and to encourage more widespread use and reuse of high-quality learning objects.
-
United Nations University (UNU) Open Course Ware, Global.Footnote 112 The United Nations University is a member of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium and is committed to the development of an OCW Website that showcases the training and educational programmes implemented by the University in a wide range of areas relevant to the work of the United Nations.
-
World Lecture Hall (WLH), North America.Footnote 113 The World Lecture Hall publishes links to pages created by academics worldwide who are using the Web to deliver course materials in any language. Some courses can be accessed as full text. Materials include syllabi, course notes, assignments, and audio and video streaming. The WLH contains links to course materials for university-level courses.
-
Wisconsin Online Resource Center, North America.Footnote 114 The Wisconsin Online Resource Center is a digital library of Web-based learning resources.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Conole, G. (2012). Open Educational Resources. In: Designing for Learning in an Open World. Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8517-0_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8517-0_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-8516-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8517-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)