The chapter discusses the essence of “Openness” in the education sector and how it is transforming the landscape worldwide, along with the opportunities for educators and learners moving towards Industry 4.0. E-learning applications need to be dynamically adjusted not only according to the learner's knowledge but also depending on a relevant context which is imperative for a diverse country like India. The general aspects of OER, its meaning, and different CC licenses are discussed. The authors also deliberate upon the licensing issues in the use and reuse of OER. In a fast-developing economy, it is important to not only adopt the new techniques in education but also assess the strengths and weaknesses of OER usage.
TopWhat Is Oer?
OER are the teaching leaning materials which are made freely and legally available for anyone in the world to Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute & Retain (Wiley,2014). There is a diverse range of opinion on what constitutes an open education resource. The word “open” can have different meanings in different contexts. There are at least two dimensions of open: cost and freedom. Regarding freedom, David Wiley defines 5 Rs for educational content, i.e. Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute and Retain.
According to UNESCO any learning material which is released with open license or in public domain for the use, remix and adaptation with no cost constitutes as OER (UNESCO,2012).
The OER movement came into limelight way back in 2001 when MIT decided to make all their course material free and Open for rest of the world. This movement was funded jointly by the Hewlett and the Andrew W. Mellon foundations. From this huge step, Open courseware consortium which is known as OE consortium today came into existence. In OE consortium more than 243 institutes from more than 40 countries have contributed in sharing their knowledge free with the world.
According to the Open Courseware Consortium, it is a conglomerate of various full course which are of high quality and are released under open license and are available for use as per 5R.
The Open Courseware finder is used to search and find OCW courses.
UNESCO in 2005 formed a global OER Community wiki to share knowledge and learning material as a collaborative effort on the challenges around the creation and adoption of Open Educational Resources.
With the advent of OER movement, many forward-looking educators are sharing their knowledge openly and transforming the education worldwide.
Figure 1. Traditional educational resources vs. OER
TopWhy Oer Matters?
OER is a global movement with the aim to make knowledge available for all. It has the potential to change the landscape of education everywhere and making it accessible in any part of the world.
According to Lisa Petrides, OER is not only free content but the process how OER are produced, for others to use, adapt and further improve the quality of the existing content (ISKME,2017).
Here are some more ways taken from an ISKME video titled “Game Changer” that provides the intention of OER:
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Idea exchange: Anyone from any part of the world can connect and share knowledge.
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Customization: OER provides me the freedom to adapt the content according to the need of the learners.
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Teaching & learning happening beyond the four walls of the classroom.
It is an effective way to bring about pedagogical changes and improve students’ learning outcome.
Figure 2. Traditional learning vs. OER: From cascading style of education to constant adoption