The story of open education resources (OERs) in the past decade, it's your turn to continue the story...

1. The Story of Open Education
Resources (OERs)
Jessie Chuang
www.classroom-aid.com
License : CC BY-SA
Graphic credit : Barbara Dieu

2. Definitions
Open Educational Resources (OER) : any educational
resources (including curriculum maps, course materials,
textbooks, videos, applications, podcasts, and any other
materials for use in teaching and learning) that are openly
available for use by educators and students, without an
accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees.
Open learning /Open education : Open learning is an
approach to education that seeks to remove all
unnecessary barriers to learning, while aiming to provide
students with a reasonable chance of success. Although
use of OER can support open learning, the two are not the
same. Facilitating ‘open education’ or ‘open learning’ needs
a bigger scope and effort on our society and education
system.

3. Definitions
Open CourseWare (OCW) : a free and open digital
publication of educational materials.These materials are
organized as courses, and often include course planning
materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content.
OCW is a subset of OER.
Open access publishing : typically referring to research
publications released under an open licence. From
Wikipedia, open access usually refers to:
• access to material (mainly scholarly publications) via the
Internet, the material is free for all to read, and to use;
• open access journal, journals that give open access to all
or a sizable part of their articles.

4. Learning Object
In 1994 Wayne Hodgins coined the term “learning object”
- One role of learning objects in the history of OER is its
popularization of the idea that digital materials can be
designed and produced in such a manner as to be reused
easily in a variety of pedagogical situations.
The learning object movement spawned several standards
efforts aimed at detailing metadata, content exchange, and
other standards necessary for users to find and reuse
digital educational content (ARIADNE, IMS, IEEE LTSC /
LOM, SCORM, &c.). -- from David Wiley

5. Open Content (David Wiley)
In 1998 David Wiley coined the term “open content” - the
principles of the open source / free software movements
can be applied to content, and the creation of the first
widely adopted open license for content (the Open
Publication License).
With the expansion of the Internet and World Wide Web
(WWW), the open content concept enabled community-
driven improvement of open source software code to
be applied to educational content.

6. Creative Commons
In 2001 Larry Lessig and others founded the Creative
Commons and released a flexible set of licenses that were
both a vast improvement on the Open Publication License’s
confusing license structure and significantly stronger legal
documents.
Creative Commons is clear in credibility and much easier
to use. Now Creative Commons has affiliate teams in 72
nations.

7. William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation are commonly
recognized as the original ‘champion’ of the ‘OER
movement’, back in 2002, they began to support MIT
OpenCourseWare initiative, Carnegie Mellon University’s
Open Learning Initiative, African Virtual University, Creative
Commons and more. To date (oct. 2010), its Education
Program has invested more than $110 million in OER,
which itself has blossomed into a worldwide movement.

8. UNESCO Forum
In 2002 UNESCO held a Forum comprised of some of the
many people who “wish[ed] to develop together a universal
educational resource available for the whole of humanity.”
The term “open educational resource” was defined:
Open Educational Resources are defined as “technology-
enabled, open provision of educational resources for
consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users
for non-commercial purposes.”
OERs include learning objects such as lecture material,
references and readings, simulations, experiments and
demonstrations, as well as syllabi, curricula and teachers'
guides.

9. MIT OpenCourseWare
In 2001 MIT announced its OpenCourseWare initiative to
publish nearly every university course for free public access
for noncommercial use. Lending the MIT brand to the
movement, its commitment played a key role in OER history.

10. Connexions Project, Rice Univ.
Connexions is an environment for collaboratively
developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly
content on the Web. Its Content Commons now contains
educational materials for a wide audience, from children to
college
students to professionals, organized in small modules
across growing topic areas that are easily connected to
larger courses.
Connexions feels more like an ecosystem than a library
with rich cross links that can compose new learning objects
from old ones. It is thus a start toward an infrastructure
that enables one to remix and compose new objects
from old ones. It has been especially effective in exploring
modularity and granularity.

11. eduCommons, Utah State Univ.
USU has developed eduCommons, it is a content
management system designed specifically to support
OpenCourseWare projects with workflow that guides users
in publishing materials in an openly accessible format. This
includes uploading materials into a repository, dealing with
copyright, re-assembling materials into courses, providing
quality assurance, and publishing materials.

12. The movement grew
Distance education, emerging technologies, virtual
universities, online education are all contributing factors in
the development of the OER movement (D’Antoni, 2009).
Scholars at more than 250 colleges and universities, a
majority of them outside the United States, have joined
forces or participated in the OER movement in some
manner. In most cases, though, their participation has
occurred primarily from the bottom up.
At the same time, hundreds, perhaps thousands of
professors, instructors and teachers have already been
individually investing in the goal of greater access by
rapidly integrating OER into their pedagogy.

13. Web 2.0 Technology
Web 2.0 technologies have significantly enhanced OER
progress. Dohn (2009) summarizes how :
● “collaboration and/or distributed authorship;
● Active, open-access, “bottom-up” participation and
interactive multi-way communication;
● Continuous production, reproduction, and transformation
of material in use and reuse across contexts;
● Openness of content, distributed ownership;
● Lack of finality, “awareness-in-practice” of the “open-
endedness” of the activity;
● Taking place on the WWW, or to a large extent utilizing
Web mediated resources and activities”.

14. The U.S. 2010 National Educational
Technology Plan :
Open Educational Resources (OER) are an important
element of an infrastructure for learning....
The Department of Education has a role in stimulating
the development and use of OER in ways that address
pressing education issues. The federal government has
proposed to invest $50 million per year for the next 10
years in creating an Online Skills Lab to develop exemplary
next-generation instructional tools and resources for
community colleges and workforce development
programs...
The OER movement begun in higher education should
be more fully adopted throughout our K-16 public
education system... Open textbooks could significantly
reduce the cost of education...

15. New federal education fund makes
available $2 billion to create OER
resources in community colleges
Timothy Vollmer, January 20th, 2011
The Department of Labor and the Department of Education
today announced a new education fund that will grant $2
billion to create OER materials for career training programs
in community colleges. The Trade Adjustment Assistance
Community College and Career Training Grant Program
(TAACCCT) will invest $2 billion over the next four years
into grants that will “provide community colleges and other
eligible institutions of higher education with funds to expand
and improve their ability to deliver education and career
training programs.” ( full program announcement (PDF) )

16. Utah Moves to Open Textbooks
(Jan.25, 2012 News release from Utah State Office of Education)
The Utah State of Office of Education (USOE) today
announced it will develop and support open textbooks in
the key curriculum areas of secondary language arts,
science, and mathematics.
Utah’s open textbooks are a great use of technology,” said
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Larry K.
Shumway. “Texts get into classrooms quickly and can be
updated as needed rather than on a publishing schedule –
something that’s particularly important in science. The open
textbook also adds to Utah’s reputation as the most cost-
efficient school system in the country. This is a fantastic
way to get the latest textbooks into the hands of Utah’s
nearly 600,000 public school students.”

17. California passes groundbreaking open
textbook legislation
Timothy Vollmer, September 27th, 2012
In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed two bills
(SB 1052 and SB 1053) that will provide for the creation of
free, openly licensed digital textbooks for the 50 most
popular lower-division college courses offered by California
colleges.
A crucial component of the California legislation is that the
textbooks developed will be made available under the
Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY)

18. British Columbia Government Lends
Support to Open Textbooks
The government of British Columbia has announced its
support for the creation of open textbooks for the 40 most
popular first- and second-year courses in the province’s
public post-secondary system. The texts will be available
for free online, or at a low cost for printed versions. The first
texts could be in use at B.C. institutions as early as 2013.
BCcampus, a publicly funded collaborative information
technology organization serving the higher-education
system, will coordinate to implement the open textbook
project through an open request for proposals.

19. OER K-12 Bill Passes in U.S. Washington
State
by Cable Green, March 1st, 2012
HB 2337 “Regarding open educational resources in K-12
education” passed the Senate (47 to 1) ...
The bill directs the Superintendent of Public Instruction
(OSPI) to support the 295 WA K-12 school districts in
learning about and adopting existing open educational
resources (OER) aligned with WA and common core
curricular standards.
The bill also directs OSPI to “provide professional
development programs that offer support, guidance, and
instruction regarding the creation, use, and continuous
improvement of open courseware.”

20. Open High School of Utah -- now
Mountain Heights Academy
Open High School of Utah, a charter school that is taught
entirely online and only uses open education resources in
its curriculum. So far, the pilot program has reached about
6,000 students, but starting this Fall that number will
expand to as many as 75,000.
In Utah, the schools are, for the most part, using open
textbooks from nonprofits like the CK12 Foundation. Other
states have approved funding to launch their own RFPs,
which technically anyone can bid on, including traditional
textbook companies.

21. OER Initiatives in Maine
Maine has been a leader in adopting Ed-Tech. In 2002,
through the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI),
the state began providing laptops to all students in gr. 7-8
in a 1-to-1 laptop program.... Recent years, Maine has
been engaged in some innovative projects around OER ….
Enabling teachers to operate in a constant revision mode is
a better way to structure the acquisition of teaching and
learning materials, rather than reviewing textbooks only
once every five or six years.
Vision : There is no lecturing, and OERs integrate with
classroom instruction seamlessly. As most kids are
naturally inclined to find information online, teachers can
guide students in using high quality, adaptable OER.

22. São Paulo Legislative Assembly Passes
OER Bill
Timothy Vollmer, December 21st, 2012
The State of São Paulo (Brazil) approved PL 989/2011,
which establishes a policy whereby educational resources
developed or purchased with government funds must be
made freely available to the public under an open copyright
license.
Congratulations to the State of São Paulo for passing this
law. We’ve seen similar policies enacted in Poland,
Canada, and the United States. PL 989/2011 will set a
powerful positive precedent for other countries to follow.

23. Netherlands Wikiwijs program
Netherlands Wikiwijs program was launched by the
Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science five
years ago. It’s intended to mainstream the use of open
education resources (“OERs”) through an Internet-based
portal.
The Wikiwijs program enables all teachers in the
Netherlands education system (primary, secondary and
higher education) to search, find, create, develop,
contribute and share all forms of learning materials.

24. Africa
Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) is
an organization or universities and groups in Africa
and around the world, including the Open University
and the Commonwealth of Learning an organization
aims to encourage the development and sharing of
open learning/distance education knowledge,
resources and technologies.
There are also groups in South Africa pushing for
the use of Open Textbooks in schools.

25. Vietnam
The government of Vietnam is developing new
curriculum at 40 universities, and making use of
OER through the Vietnam Education Foundation, a
program funded by the U.S. Government with the
mission of "strengthen[ing] the U.S.-Vietnam
bilateral relationship through educational exchanges
in science and technology."

26. Who constitute OER stakeholders?
Educators, formal and informal learners, institutions
(academic and non-academic), organisations, educational
policy makers, funding bodies, educational repositories,
governments, citizens and society within the national and
international arena.
The World Bank, the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development(OECD), the International
Association of Nationals Academies of Science, the
Commonwealth of Learning(COL), the European Union, the
European Organization of Open University ... are
supporters of this movement.

27. Now it's your turn to continue the story...
The new adoption of common core K-12 state standards
provides an excellent opportunity to develop high-quality,
openly licensed K-12 courseware that is aligned with these
standards.

28. OER online PD course - Using
OER to create K-12 curriculum

29. Reference:
"Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development"
- David Wiley, Utah State University Center for Open and
Sustainable Learning
"A Guide to Using Open Educational Resources (OERs) in
Marketing Education: What are they? How do I develop
them? And why should I bother?" University of Liverpool.
http://research-archive.liv.ac.uk/
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