Back

Learning resources made accessible

What is open education?

Posted by the FLL team, April 2020

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about open education is simply that: Open. So what does that mean? Open, as in “accessible” has several aspects: Economic, cultural, political, technical and geographical accessibility. Online learning has the promise of flattening these barriers, but technology can also be made to serve continued and increased inequality. Open education resources is in this respect as much an aspect of ideology as of institutionalized ownership. 

A key aspect of open access to learning is the practice of sharing – in light of existing copyright frameworks, as well as institutional rights to preserve and enhance the integrity of programs, curricula, storage of materials, and many more such concerns.  

Open Education Resources is also a movement, with a number of websites one might visit to branch into the idea of OER. Some of them are listed below. 

OER CommonsOER UNESCO  – Opensource.com @ Edutopia