Join the community: subscribe to the mailing list

From OER_Wiki

[edit] Target audience

This document is aimed at individual academics and decision-makers in higher education institutions that are interested in becoming active participants in the OER world, as publishers and users of OER.

At the beginning of each section there is a short summary to help the reader determine whether the content is applicable to his or her situation.

Most of the Toolkit is designed for academics who are interested in finding and using OER in the courses they teach, or who wish to publish OER that they have developed. The sections have been kept short and to the point. They aim to provide just enough information to get the reader started. Each section ends with a list of references and suggestions for further reading.

Some sections are aimed at institutional decision-makers and academics who are interested in setting up a more formal OER project. These projects may start with just a few interested academics but, as they grow, institutional policies, funding and legal constraints become more relevant.

Individuals who are not aiming to set up a institutional project may nonetheless be interested to read the whole document. Likewise, institutional planners, IT staff or librarians who are interested in setting up an OER project would benefit from understanding the academic's perspective.

Finally, there is an audience that we care a great deal about, but who fall outside the scope of this document: the students. Some of the most innovative and successful open education projects are driven or supported by students. Examples of student involvement in OER projects are provided throughout the Toolkit.

[edit] Overview

Higher education institutions around the world are recognising the value of sharing curricula and content, collaborating on their initial creation and further development, and doing so under the umbrella of free and open access to information and knowledge. Unfortunately, to date (July 2009) very few universities from developing countries have joined this emerging open education movement as active contributors. This imbalance carries an assumption that knowledge flows from developed to developing countries. So far, not enough attention has been paid to the special needs and requirements of institutions in the southern hemisphere, or to the contributions they can make to a universal knowledge commons.

The term "open education" in this document refers to a new form of teaching and learning, enabled by Open Educational Resources (OER). Others, including UNESCO elsewhere, also use "open education" to mean accessible distance learning, which is referred to as "open and distance learning" ODL in this document.

There is growing consensus that Open Educational Resources (OER) offer benefits to universities in developing countries. This document is designed as a toolkit for developing country universities. It draws on experience from institutions around the world to describe in practical terms how universities can:

• identify Open Educational Resources and share them with academics and students;
• integrate Open Educational Resources into teaching and learning practices;
• publish their own Open Educational Resources.

The first section, Background to Open Educational Resources, describes the history and evolution of the Open Educational Resources in the context of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and open and distance learning, and introduces some of the benefits to institutions and individuals.

The second section, The emergence of Open Education, begins by connecting recent OER developments to the broader open education ecosystem. It describes how learning and teaching practices change in an education environment that is based around social networking, peer-to-peer learning, and open content that can be shared and modified with few restrictions.

Copyright and open content licensing are the topics of Section Three, where we discuss different ways of licensing content and how this impacts the ability to re-use and re-share materials. It concludes with practical advice for OER publishers on clearing copyright.

Section Four, Finding and using Open Educational Resources, continues the move into more practical terrain. It describes how to search for and find OER, and what to keep in mind with respect to local hosting and licensing issues when working with content created by others.

The fifth section, Creating and sharing OER is written with the needs of the individual educator in mind. It discusses practical steps for creating and sharing materials as Open Educational Resources, including the technical formats to use, and where to host/store resources.

Information about setting up an institutional OER project can be found in the final two sections.

Section Six, Establishing institutional OER projects covers some of the arguments that can be used to "make the case" for such a project, and describes some of the strategic choices that have proven effective in existing projects.

The final section, Setting up your OER project, moves from the strategic to the more practical level to list the things you need to consider when setting up an institutional OER project.

Practical advice is based on case studies from around the world. Notes, references and further reading are provided at the end of each section. All online resources referred to in the document are also stored as bookmarks in the social bookmarking site http://del.icio.us, tagged with the term oer-toolkit.