Given the rapid rise of open educational resources (OER) for informal learning pursuits impacting countless millions of people each day around the world, this study investigated the impact of the initiative that spearheaded this movement; namely, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) open courseware (OCW). More specifically, it explored…

Our study found that most students considered OER to be as good or better in terms of quality and engagement as traditional texts, while also allowing them to put saved funds toward their educational pursuits. As rising costs in higher education affect current and potential students, faculty and students are looking for ways to cut costs where…

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are online classroom content that can be reused, modified, and shared freely. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) undertook a project to redesign its undergraduate curriculum using OERs in place of traditional textbooks. UMUC librarians have played a critical role in this project, helping to find…

Despite a rise in awareness and production of open education resources (OER) over the past decade, mainstream media outlets continue to define open in economic terms of consumer cost and not in theoretical terms of remix or appropriation. This period in the "open access" debate has coincided with a proliferation of free-of-charge video…

Over the past two decades, the education sector in India has undergone a substantial transformation. Recent advances in technology have provided access to high quality educational resources and information on the Internet. This article examines the role of open educational resources (OER) in addressing the challenges of higher education in India,…

Universitas Terbuka (UT) is Indonesia's higher education institution which implements distance education system. The term distance implies that learning is not performed face-to-face but there is geographically separation between students and teacher. Therefore, UT must provide many kinds of learning modes and learning support. To facilitate…

As Open Educational Resources (OER) increasingly receive attention from academics, educational foundations, and government agencies, exemplars will emerge that lower student textbook costs by moving away from commercial publishers through self-publishing or curating web-based resources. Joe Moxley's "Writing Commons" serves as a scaled…

Over the past decade great progress has been made in improving the availability of Open Educational Resources (OER). However, one area in which OER has been deficient is in its ability to lead to college or university credit, something that many users of OER may desire. This article describes the work done by the Saylor Academy in amalgamating OER…

More and more educational institutions are using educational technologies and online learning materials to help students achieve satisfactory learning effects. However, not all teachers are able to prepare and design digital learning materials for students. This research attempted to empirically demonstrate the effects of applying open educational…

Convincing faculty to accept, create, adapt, and adopt open educational resources (OERs) instead of textbooks for their courses has proven challenging because incentives are lacking. One approach to provide incentive to faculty members is an OER course fee, which could be employed in courses that use OERs approved by the institution for courses…

This paper discusses a current project to develop open educational resources (OER) for legislative counsel in countries of the Commonwealth of Nations. The project is the latest step in a 20-year old distance education program for those professionals. The paper explores best practices for investment in freely available OER for use by professionals…

Success in open educational resources (OER) has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OER are in learning and teaching. Approaches to OER policy and sustainability are just two other key aspects that remain unresolved across the…

Open educational resources (OER) have become new buzzwords in the glocalization of education. While OER are often espoused as enabling educational equity, the reality is not always the case. Looking only at the positives of new educational methods can mask perpetuating challenges, which makes the open aspect of OER a misnomer. Taking an…

Like many universities worldwide, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa has joined the open educational resources (OER) movement, making a selection of teaching and learning materials available through its OER directory, UCT OpenContent. However, persuading and then supporting busy academics to share their teaching materials as OER…

This article discusses the role of open and distance learning to widen participation and promote social inclusion within Australian higher education, as well as the benefits that open educational resources (OER) could bring to that context. It also explores some of the most relevant social inclusion policies and related initiatives developed in…