Introduction to oer

Lesson:  introduction

Lesson components

• Fast Fact
• Skills/Objectives
• Success Indicators
• Introduction
• Activity
• Review questions
• Resources

Fast fact

According to Wikipedia , OER is a term that was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries funded by the Hewlett Foundation. The definition OER is:

“digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research”

Skills/objectives

Learners will be able to:

• Define and describe OER.
• List the advantages and disadvantages of OER use.

Success indicators

• Learner memberships in OER community websites.
• Learner-generated posting to open forum about OER issues.

Introduction

Definition

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials freely available in the public domain. A definition of OER from the The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is:

"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."

The term OER has been used to refer to learning materials such as:

• Learning objects (quizzes, crossword puzzles, flashcards, animations, etc.)
• Audio lectures
• Audiovideo lectures
• Images
• Sounds and music
• Entire course content and open courseware
• Collections of journal articles and institutional repositories
• Textbooks

Background

Hewlett Foundation has taken a pioneering role in the development and use of OER with its support of many initiatives: "The Open Educational Resources movement began in 2001 when the Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations jointly funded MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), the first institution committed to making all of its course materials freely available. Since then, more than 60 additional institutions have launched OpenCourseWare Web sites." Just some of the many OER initatives supported by the Hewlett Foundation include:

• MIT Open Courseware
• Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Sharing Of Free Intellectual Assets (Sofia)
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health OpenCourseWare
• Tufts University OpenCourseWare
• Utah State University OpenCourseWare
• eduCommons
• Carnegie Mellon University, Open Learning Initiative
• Monterey Institute for Technology, Online Advanced Placement courses
• Connexions
• Internet Archive, Education

The Open Educational Resources movement is part of a global effort to make knowledge available to all.  The UNESCO's Virtual University Forum provides an overview about definitions, initiatives, and community-building. Many repositories of open learning materials are listed at the Open Educational Resources (OER) Index .

Some benefits of oer include:

• Fosters pedagogical innovation and relevance that avoids teaching from the textbook
• Broadens use of alternatives to textbooks while maintaining instructional quality
• Lowers costs of course materials for students