Open educational resources
Open educational resources (OER) are
freely available, openly licensed documents
and media that are useful for learning, teaching, and assessing also for
research purposes. Even though some consider the use of an open file format to
be an important characteristic of OER, this is not a universally accepted
requirement. OER initiatives aspire to provide
open access to high-quality education resources on a worldwide scale. The
number of OER related programmes and projects have been growing quickly within
the past few years among large institution-based initiatives to numerous small-scale
activities,
Types
of open educational resources include: course materials, modules, full
courses, learning objects, open textbooks, tests, openly licensed videos,
software, and other tools, materials used to support access to knowledge. OER
may be costless and easily available static resources, dynamic resources which
change over time in the course of having knowledge gaining interacting with and
updating them or a course or module with a combination of these resources.
Open Educational Resources global logo.
Is OER the same as e-learning?
OER is
not synonymous with online learning or e-learning but many people using the
terms interchangeably by mistake. Openly licensed
content are produced in any medium like paper-based text, audio, video or
computer-based multimedia. A lot of e-learning courses may give OER but it is
not that OER are necessarily e-learning. Many open resources being established
currently were shareable in a digital format and are also printable. Although the
bandwidth and connectivity challenges common in some developing countries, it is
known that a high percentage of resources to higher education in those
countries are shared as printable resources, rather than in e-learning.
Advantages of using OERs include:
- Expanded access to learning.
OER can
be access by Students anywhere and at any time.
- Scalability.
OERs
are easy to distribute widely with little or no cost..
- Improvement of regular course Index.
For example, multimedia material such as
videos can follow text. Giving information in multiple formats may help
students to more easily learn the material being taught.
- Quick circulation.
Information
may be disseminated rapidly. Quick availability of material may increase the
timeliness and/or relevance of the material being presented.
- Less expense for students.
Instead
of traditional textbooks or course packs the use of OER can automatically
reduce the
cost of course materials for students.
Disadvantages of OERs include:
- Quality issues.
Since
many OER allow any user to create an account and post material, some resources
may not be relevant and/or accurate.
- No direct interaction between
teachers and students.
- Language and/or cultural
barriers.
Although
efforts are being made to make OERs available in several languages, many are
only available in English.
- Technological issues.
Some
students get problems of using some OERs if they have a slow or erratic
internet connection.
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