Open Educational Resources
A Catalyst for Innovation
Education is the key to economic, social and environmental progress, and governments around the world are looking to improve their education systems. The future of education in the 21st century is not simply about reaching more people, but about improving the quality and diversity of educational opportunities. How to best organise and support teaching and learning requires imagination, creativity and innovation.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials that make use of tools such as open licensing to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement and repurposing by others for educational purposes. The OER community has grown considerably over the past 10 years and the impact of OER on educational systems has become a pervasive element of educational policy
This report aims to highlight state of the art developments and practices in OER, but also to demonstrate how OER can be a tool for innovation in teaching and learning.
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Containing educational costs
This chapter looks at the common expectation that open educational resources (OER) lead to cost savings for private households and the public purse. It differentiates between initial development costs and maintenance costs once an OER has been developed and is being used. The development costs may be the same, higher or lower than the original educational resources they are replacing – depending on what the OER are being used for. Maintenance costs can be low, but are dependent on maintenance being coordinated and happening. Examples are given of countries that have been liberalising their procurement strategies for educational resources in the expectation that OER will help save costs without a negative impact on quality. The practical cases of OER use presented in the chapter further emphasise the cost-saving potential of reusing and widely distributing existing resources.
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