Defining open educational resources (OER)

What is an OER?

The term open educational resources (OER) describes any educational resources which have been made available for use under open licenses which mean that anyone can use, adapt and redistribute them. Educational resources are any material designed for teaching, learning and research used by educators and students (including curriculum maps, course materials, textbooks, videos, multimedia applications, podcasts, etc.). OER may be available online, in print or any other media.

What is not an OER?

Not all educational material found on the web is an OER. Most resources on the internet are closed resources, even if they are available for free. Materials that are under full copyright or which are not accompanied by a specific license allowing anyone to copy, adapt and share them are not open educational resources. You can use these materials only within the fair use provisions or copyright exceptions.

Other popular definitions

The declaration of the World OER Congress held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 20 - 22 June 2012 calls on governments worldwide to openly license publicly funded educational materials. Read it HERE.

Read the definition of the Hewlett Foundation HERE.

Benefits of Open Education and OER

The benefits of open education include the following:

• Education is open to anyone;
• Affordable and ideally free;
• Available from anywhere and not restricted by access to the university;
• Access to huge amount of study materials;
• Intellectual capital is available for reuse.

CC Zero (Gavin Blake)

You can read more on the benefits of Open Educational Resources here.

Challenges of using OER

Despite the noble intentions described above, it turns out that using OER is not always straightforward! There are various challenges that face practitioners when it comes to harnessing OER. Current frustrations for users of OER often include:

• Sourcing appropriate OER: this is an issue because there is no one-stop-shop for OER. They are scattered across the Internet.
• Understanding open licences: not everyone is familiar with different open licences and what they permit.
• Adaptation of OER requires new skills: to adapt and repurpose OER, the practitioner needs more than basic ICT skills and also needs practice in revising and remixing resources.
• Traditional mindsets predominate: many educators feel it is wrong to use other people’s work and thus protect, rather than sharing, their own resources.
• Robust Internet connectivity and good access to ICT is essential to access and adapt OER.
• Schools and universities seldom incentivize lesson creation.

However, the benefits seem to outweigh the challenges, and the adoption (and increased sharing) of OER is continuing to grow.

Resources

A short history of OER

An Open Education reader

The case for Free use: reasons not to use a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license

Say Libre

What is free content?

Free Cultural Works definition

OER Mythbusting

Open Educational Resources

Giving Knowledge for Free - the emergence of Open Educational Resources, (2007)