Open educational resources (OER) can make educational resources widely available to all students and educators for free; however, OER are still untried in many academic programmes in higher education. This article reports a case of adoption of an open access textbook for an introductory information systems course and discusses the process and…

Programmes that provide adult learners with an alternative pathway to university typically offer considerable support. Students in such enabling, or access, programmes are increasingly choosing to study online because of the flexibility it affords, yet little is known about how well this mode of learning caters for their needs. The aim of this…

The educational policy in Morocco is aimed at promoting the wide use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education and the adoption of interactive and autonomous digital resources for distance teaching and self-learning. The objective of this research is to evaluate the suitability of the existing digital educational resources for…

This article reports on a national study conducted in the United States on the current institutional practices, structures, resources and policies that are needed to ensure online accessibility for all students at colleges and universities. Key findings include the need to better articulate who is responsible for online accessibility initiatives…

Open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) are relatively new areas in educational research. How OER and OEP can help practitioners enhance curricula is one of a number of under-researched topics. This article aims to enable practitioners to identify and implement appropriate open practices to enhance higher education…

Adult learning and open education have become key elements on the European Agenda. This paper presents the first results of a foresight activity that aims to contribute to an understanding of how "Opening up Education" can improve adult learning in Europe in the future. It argues that to open up adult learning two main challenges must be…

The economic proverb "There is no such thing such as a free lunch" applies also to open educational resources (OER). In recent years, several authors have used revenue models and business models to analyse the different sources of possible funding for OER. In this article the business models of Osterwalder and Chesbrough are combined…

The open educational resource (OER) movement has reached a critical mass due to recent technology advancements. In Taiwan, to overcome the language barrier, the Opensource Opencourse Prototype System (OOPS) plays a significant role in enabling Chinese-speaking users to benefit from this global education movement. However, our understanding about…

This article comments on some trends in the evolution of science teaching at a distance using the Open University UK (OU UK) experience as a benchmark. Even from the first years of the university there was an understanding of the potential role for media in developing methods for teaching science at a distance, in particular the potential for…

This paper describes the internal motivations and external drivers that led The Open University UK to enter the field of Open Educational Resources through its institution-wide OpenLearn initiative (www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). It also describes some of the emerging evidence of the impacts inside and outside the university. Through the rapid…

National student feedback surveys are administered in a number of countries, and several of these encompass both campus-based and distance learning students. The UK Open University achieves a high ranking in the annual National Student Survey (NSS), but there are some anomalies in the results. The NSS questionnaire was administered to three…

Open licences are critical for defining Open Educational Resources. The goal of this article is to explain the logic of open licensing to teachers, funders, and educational policy-makers--to explain the relatively simple but vital considerations that are necessary to build this global educational commons of free learning material. In particular,…

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…

Open education resources (OER) are taking centre-stage in many higher educational institutions globally, driven by the need to raise institutional profiles, improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning and achieve universal access to education. Many academics attracted to the idea of turning teaching materials into OER have, however, found…

As India marches rapidly towards an ambitious agenda of economic and social advancement, one of the greatest challenges it faces is to provide extensive access to quality higher education opportunities. An evident and expanding Open Education Resources movement offers great promise for meeting this challenge through initiatives that make quality…