3.2: Defining OER
Upon successful completion of this subunit you will be able to:
- Define what constitutes an Open Educational Resource (OER)
- Explain the relationship between digital freedom and learning
- Explain the shortcomings of copyright as a mechanism for regulating ownership of ideas in a digital world
- Discuss the value of OER in solving real-world problems; and
- Identify the implications of OER for learning in a digital age
Watch this following video from Dr. David Wiley. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, an organization dedicated to increasing student success to and improving the affordability of education through the adoption of open educational resources (OER) by middle schools, high schools, community and state colleges, and universities. Previously, David was Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology in the David O. McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University. His career is dedicated to increasing access to educational opportunity for everyone around the world.
In the knowledge and information-based economies of the 21st century, the wealth and prosperity of nations are based on the priceless resource of ideas. The ownership of ideas is in part regulated by copyright. The system of copyright evolved in an era when the expenses needed to print, distribute and sell a book were significant. In a digital world where ideas can be distributed freely and duplicated at the press of a button, we are witnessing unprecedented opportunities to widen access to high quality educational resources for all learners of the world. Nonetheless, there is still much work to be done to realise the potential of digitally available curriculum materials for our national education systems.
This subsection on the ownership of ideas sets the context for our global mission to return to the core business of education, which is to share knowledge freely.
The concept of open education encapsulates a simple but powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that the open web provides an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge. In short the “open” in Open Educational Resources means they must be free and provide the permissions to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. However, we need to examine the concept in more detail.
Our collective understanding of the definition of OER is maturing in parallel with increased adoption of open education in our formal education institutions around the world. In nurturing the development of a sustainable open education ecosystem, there is growing consensus that a definition of OER ideally needs to incorporate three interrelated dimensions:
- Educational values: OER should be free;
- Pedagogical utility: OER should embed the permissions of the 5Rs (reuse, revise, remix, redistribute and retain); and
- Technology enablers: Technology and media choices should not restrict the permissions of the 5R framework.
Each component is summarised below.
- In this section we shift our focus to explore the benefits of OER from the learner’s perspective. Apart from the obvious benefits of savings related to the direct cost of textbooks and free online learning opportunities, we should ask: Does the “opening” of educational materials generate additional benefits for learning? What does OER enable that closed resources can’t deliver for learning in a digital age?
In this subunit, we:
- Postulated that in a digital world, where the cost of replicating knowledge is near zero, as individuals working together we can widen access to learning for all using the open web and open content licensing.
- Considered the relationships between digital freedom and education.
- Reflected on the shortcomings of copyright as a mechanism to regulate the ownership of ideas in a digital world and the necessity to align our educational practices with our core values in fostering an ecology of creativity in education.
- Provided a framework for defining OER according to three interrelated dimensions:
- Educational values: namely that OER should be free;
- Pedagogical utility: ensuring that OER embeds the permissions of the 4Rs (reuse, revise, remix and redistribute); and
- Technology enablers: specifying that OER should consider access to the technical tools required for editing and that OER should be meaningfully editable to facilitate the 4R activities.
- Considered the implications of OER for learning in a digital age with a focus on solving real-world problems.
Challenge summary
Summary: Identify key implications of OER for learning in a digital age from current research 
30 – 40 minutes
