Open Educational Resources (OERs) for Language Learning

Abstract

The term “open educational resources” (OER) refers to materials used for teaching and learning that, unlike most materials produced by commercial publishers, carry an open copyright license. Because of its open license, OER give users’ rights traditionally reserved for authors and publishers, such as the right to adapt the original work and the right to disseminate derivatives free of charge. A global, grassroots phenomenon, the OER movement coalesced at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century when educators sought to create intellectual content that was accessible to the Internet public. Thanks to a democratic ethos that promotes the sharing of intellectual property, the OER movement has resulted in the collaboration between educational stakeholders, the creation of uniquely adaptable content, and the production of much-needed resources for less commonly taught languages that are frequently ignored by publishers. During the first decade of the OER movement, advocates focused on the development and dissemination of free materials to combat rising costs. During its second decade, however, the movement has begun to focus on empirical research to ascertain the impact of OER on student learning, including FL learning. In addition, open educators are beginning to explore different strategies for bringing OER into the educational mainstream.