Open Educational Resource (OER)

| Thursday, March 29, 2018

What is Open Educational Resource (OER)?

💌Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner.

💌 Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.

💌Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge

💌Whilst purely informational content has a significant role in learning and teaching, it is helpful to consider learning resources by their levels of granularity and to focus on the degree to which information content is embedded within a learning activity:

Digital assets – normally a single file (e.g. an image, video or audio clip), sometimes called a ‘raw media asset’;
Information objects – a structured aggregation of digital assets, designed purely to present information;
Learning objects – an aggregation of one or more digital assets which represents an educationally meaningful stand-alone unit;
Learning activities – tasks involving interactions with information to attain a specific learning outcome;
Learning design – structured sequences of information and activities to promote learning.

(adapted from Littlejohn, A., Falconer, I. and McGill, L. (2008) 'Characterising effective eLearning resources'. Computers & Education, 50 (3), pp. 757-771.)

💌OER initiatives aspire to provide open access to high-quality education resources on a global scale. From large institution-based or institution-supported initiatives to numerous small-scale activities, the number of OER related programs and projects has been growing quickly within the past few years.

Watch the videos below to understand better 😄