Open Education Resources
- Irem Sepici
- May 8, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: May 29, 2022
The concept of open education, with massive technological improvements, created global contribution opportunities for scholars and educators. The main reason behind this intervention is that open education allows people to grow, participate, and master their knowledge(“What is Open Education,” 2010).
"Access, agency, ownership, participation, and experience"
According to Kahle(2008), as cited in Blessinger and Bliss, the fundamental principles of open education contain a design for access, agency, ownership, participation, and experience, allowing the promotion of collaboration to access high-quality education opportunities.
"Reach, reuse, interpret, and modify"
Open education resources(OERs) provide opportunities for scholars and educators to reach, reuse, interpret, and modify the knowledge via by subject, complete courses, open access books, large repositories, multimedia, and images and artwork resources.
OERs by subject are usually created in the form of google docs by college librarians to provide resources for instructors, such as “OER guides by subject” and “WebWork” designed as open sources for math and science especially.
Complete courses such as “Open Courseware” enable open education classes as an independent search engine for places like Yale, MIT, and UMass. Another example of that is EdX, a variety of high-profile libraries that provide college-level courses.
The best examples of open access books are “Open Textbook Library” and “OpenStax College,” which give peer-reviewed textbooks interactive participation opportunities for scholars. Likewise, TED and Khan Academy are great resources for inspiring thinkers with big ideas and lectures on various topics as multimedia resources of OERs (the University of Pitsburg Libraries, 2022).
Besides the powerful examples of OERs, it is more than just open access and promotion for access for everyone to learn. They enable learners to be flexible and authentic by providing teaching techniques with open technologies, resources, and experiences(Conole and Ehlers (2010) as cited in Blessinger and Bliss).
"Learner-centered platforms"
OERs are outstanding contributions to education because they serve as “learner-centered platforms” that assure access and equity to education by combining technology and education to create re-professionalism in teaching (Petrides, 2010). Furthermore, they encourage student achievement and retention by implementing access to resources for all at an optimal time and cost. Also, they create changes in teaching methods by enabling faculty to adapt, adopt, and develop QERs to maximize the usage of content to deliver creative learning experiences to learners. Additionally, since OERs provide complete control over the learning materials by editing and updating, they provide academic freedom to all learners.
Resources
University of Pittsburgh Library System (2022). OER - Open Educational Resources: Big List of Resources.
University of Montana (2022). Open Educational Resources (OER): OER Benefits/Challenges Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library.
Blessinger, P. and Bliss, TJ. (2016). Introduction to Open Education.
Petrides, L. (2010). Open Educational Resources: The Education Ecosystem Comes to Life.
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