The term "open pedagogy" has been used in a variety of different ways over the past several decades. In recent years, its use has also become associated with Open Educational Resources (OER). The wide range of competing definitions of open pedagogy, together with its semantic overlap with another underspecified term, open educational…

The RISE (Resource Inspection, Selection, and Enhancement) Framework is a framework supporting the continuous improvement of open educational resources (OER). The framework is an automated process that identifies learning resources that should be evaluated and either eliminated or improved. This is particularly useful in OER contexts where the…

"Open Educational Resources" (OER) have the potential to replace traditional textbooks in higher education. Previous studies indicate that use of OER results in high student and faculty satisfaction, lower costs, and similar or better educational outcomes. In this case study, we compared students using traditional textbooks with those…

The use of online learning at the primary and secondary school level is growing exponentially in the United States. Much of this growth is with full-time online schools, most of which are operated by for-profit companies that use proprietary online course content. In this article we trace the development of, and philosophy behind, a full-time…

The nation is in the midst of a revolution in education. For the first time in human history, tools to enable everyone to attain all the education they desire are available. And best of all this education is available at almost no cost. The key to this sea of change in learning is open education resources, or OER. OER are educational materials…

Proponents of open educational resources claim that significant cost savings are possible when open textbooks displace traditional textbooks in the classroom. Over a period of two years, we worked with 20 middle and high school science teachers (collectively teaching approximately 3,900 students) who adopted open textbooks to understand the…

A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources. By "open" it is generally meant that the resource is available at no cost to others for adaptation and reuse in different contexts. However, "open" is not a simple dichotomy; rather, there is a continuum of openness. We discuss four separate aspects of reuse and…

The word "open" is receiving a lot of attention in education circles. For over a decade, "open" has been used as an adjective to modify a variety of nouns that describe teaching and learning materials. For example, open content, open educational resources, open courseware, and open textbooks are all part of the current higher education discourse.…

In this paper we present a history of the idea of Open Educational Resources, overview the current state of the Open Educational Resources movement, report on critical issues facing the field in the immediate future, and present two new projects to watch in 2009.

Recognizing the pedagogical value of gaming, academics along with game designers and educational content developers have begun producing resources to improve educational game design and make instructional games more accessible to teachers wanting to incorporate them into their classes. However, the rapid growth of such resources has made it…

The role of distance education is shifting. Traditionally distance education was limited in the number of people served because of production, reproduction, and distribution costs. Today, while it still costs the university time and money to produce a course, technology has made it such that reproduction costs are almost non-existent. This shift…