Open Educational Resources (OER): General

UNESCO believes that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue. Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.

Jorum is a repository in the UK for discovering and sharing Open Education Resources covering a variety of subject areas.

The Orange Grove has Open Educational Resources in a variety of subject areas including Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics, Visual & Performing Arts, Engineering & Technology and Communication & Information.

OpenStak has a range of free textbooks that have been developed and peer-reviewed by educators.

Flat World Knowledge have textbooks in the subject areas of Business & Economics, Humanities & Social Sciences, Mathematics and the Sciences.

iBerry is a non profit making website connecting to information and resources for learners and anyone else with an interest in Higher education.

What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials freely available online for anyone to use. Different licenses allow for resources to be shared and re-purposed by others (refer Creative Commons tab).

Open Educational Resources include:

• Learning content: course material, content modules, learning objects, collections and journals.
• Tools: software to support creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organisation of content, content and learning management systems, content development fools and online learning communities.
• Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles and localization of content.

(Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 2015)