The present report is the outcome of a study on the status of OER in the Commonwealth conducted in late 2021. Considering the importance of OER in the context of the challenges posed by COVID-19, the findings shall be useful for Member States and educational institutions to mainstream OER. The overall objective is to help countries across the…

In 2013, the Open University (OU) in the UK launched a large-scale survey of users of its OpenLearn platform for open educational resources. The survey results revealed that OpenLearn is functioning as a showcase and a taster for the OU, thereby offering informal learners a bridge to formal education. In 2014 and 2015, the OpenLearn survey was…

The advent of the internet and digital technologies has given rise to a number of new economic models. These have often been applied to education, but either through faults in the initial models or differences in the characteristics of the education sector, they have not proven to be widely applicable. The use of digital, network technologies…

This paper positions discussion of learning designs in the broad context of reuse and repurpose. It proposes that not enough attention has been given to the "purpose" of reuse and the motivation of those who choose to share or use reusable learning resources. There is a need for both a broad and deep understanding of what occurs when…

Awarding badges to recognise achievement is not a new development. Digital badging now offers new ways to recognise learning and motivate learners, providing evidence of skills and achievements in a variety of formal and informal settings. Badged open courses (BOCs) were piloted in various forms by the Open University (OU) in 2013 to provide a…

Open educational resources (OER) can be described in numerous ways (Creative Commons, 2012). In this visualization based context, however, OER can be defined as ...teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by…

This intervention study examined the interaction of animal and veterinary nursing students with reusable learning objects (RLO) in the context of preparing for summative assessment. Data was collected from 199 undergraduates using quantitative and qualitative methods. Students accessed RLO via personal devices in order to reinforce taught…

This paper describes a study undertaken with language tutors who were engaged in a project to publish and create open educational resources. We sought to investigate how far working with open content could offer language tutors opportunities to develop professionally and acquire new technical knowledge for language teaching. Language educators…

Open educational resources (OER) continue to support the needs of educators and learners globally. However, it is clear that to maximise their potential more focus is needed on reuse and repurposing. Accordingly, adapting OER for local contexts remains one of the greatest challenges of the open education movement, with little written about how to…

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009-2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging…

This study was conducted as part of the OER for Skills Development project of COL, supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The objective of the study was to collect baseline data from Commonwealth institutions with respect to the development, use and reuse of OER; the availability of support; and challenges faced in fostering the…

Introduction: This paper reports on the findings of a study investigating the potential effects of discipline (sciences and engineering versus humanities and social sciences) on the application of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers learning object metadata elements for the description of learning objects in the Jorum learning…

This paper reports the findings of a project "Digital Futures in Teacher Education" (DeFT) undertaken as part of the third phase of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) UK Open Educational Resources (OER) programme. It builds on previous work (Gruszczynska and Pountney, 2012, 2013) that has addressed attempts to embed OER…

In its first decade (2001-2010) the OER movement has been carried by numerous relevant and successful projects around the globe. These were sometimes large-scale but more often not, and they were primarily initiated by innovating educational institutions and explorative individual experts. What has remained, however, is the quest for a sustainable…

Scholars are increasingly being asked to share teaching materials, publish in open access journals, network in social media, and reuse open educational resources (OER). The theoretical benefits of Open Educational Practices (OEP) have become understood in the academic community but thus far, the use of OER has not been rapidly adopted. We aim to…