History

History and Development of Open Educational Resources

Open Education and OER have their origins in the open source, open knowledge, and free sharing movements in the latter part of the twentieth century. Alongside these, there were developments in open and distance learning that drew on rapid innovations in technology. A further development grew from the work of one of the leading developers of the early intellectual framework for OER as adaptable and repurposable. David Wiley at Utah State University promoted the idea of ‘open content’ and licensing, which in turn led to the foundation of the Creative Commons in 2001.

  • 2001

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began its Open Courseware (OCW) initiative, making the vast majority of its teaching materials and courses available freely online. This promoted the idea of large scale sharing of teaching resources resulting in the formation of the Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC).

  • 2002

    The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted by UNESCO, an organisation that has done much to promote OER as a driver for educational change across the globe. According to UNESCO, OER designates ‘teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open licence that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions’.

  • 2012

    A historic declaration by UNESCO called on all governments to make all educational materials freely available.

Why Open Education Matters?

Open Educational Resources (OER) licensed with Creative Commons are based on a framework simply designated as 4Rs (reuse, revise, remix and redistribute).

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