Learning about OER – Open Educational Resources

OER is a transformational idea that can play an important role in changing the nature, and availability, of educational materials, content, and tools.

I’m pretty sure that the first time I heard the formal phrase “Open Educational Resources” was during Josh Baron’s Disruptive Change keynote presentation at the Campus Technology 2010 conference last July. When I saw Baron’s picture in the article, “The Future of Content is an Open Book” in November’s Campus Technology magazine, it caught my attention. The article provided a great discussion of open content for education, and reminded me again of OER. I knew I had to follow up and learn more about this exciting concept.

According to Wikipedia’s page on OER, the following definition of OER has been proposed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: “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.”

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