LibGuides: Open Educational Resources (OER) Guide: Intro to OER

OER's Financial Benefits

In this video, David Wiley of Lumen Learning talks about some benefits of OER, particularly the financial benefits:

Open Education is Changing the Rules

This video from ISKME talks about the many benefits of using OER.

Types of OER

OER can be any type of material or resource used for teaching and learning that is free to use and/or alter.

OER include many types of resources in different media and formats:

lesson plans
course materials
modules
student guides
teaching notes
textbooks
research articles
videos
assessment tools and instruments
simulations
role plays
databases
software
apps

History of OER

An OER Timeline

1971

Michael Hart founds Project Gutenberg "to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search" ("The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg by Michael Hart,” 1992).

1998

The term "open content" is coined by David Wiley. One role of open content in the history of OER is its popularization of the idea that the principles of the open source / free software movements can be productively applied to content.

2001

MIT launches the OpenCourseWare (OCW) Initiative.

2002

The term "Open Educational Resources" (OER) is first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

2007

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration arose from a meeting that aimed to foster efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education.

2012

The OER Declaration was adopted during the World OER Congress in Paris in June 2012. It can be downloaded on the UNESCO web site.

References

The History and Philosophy of Project Gutenberg by Michael Hart. (1992, August). Project Gutenberg Wiki. Wiki. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_History_and_Philosophy_of_Project_Gutenberg_by_Michael_Hart
Mindmap created by Sara Valla, UniPR Co-Lab, Italy - DILL Master's

Learn More

MOOC MOOC, the MOOC about MOOCs
This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was created to learn about MOOCs. Materials used in the MOOC are still available online.
Grainne Conole: e4innovation.com on OER
A blog by a professor who writes on topics related to OER and open pedagogy.
OER Knowledge Cloud
The OER Knowledge Cloud has been established to identify, collect, preserve and disseminate available documents of enduring value to researchers, industry, government, scholars, writers, historians, journalists and informal learners.