While digital products have made significant inroads into the educational resources market, textbooks and other print materials still command about 60 percent of sales. But whether print or digital, all of these commercial offerings now face threats from a burgeoning effort to promote "open" resources for education--that is, materials…

Kenya, like many African countries, has faced enormous challenges in the production of and access to quality relevant teaching and learning materials and resources in primary and secondary school classrooms. This has been occasioned by a plethora of factors which include, but are not limited to, lack of finances, tradition, competence, and the…

Many observers find it baffling that faculty in higher education have been slow to adopt open educational resources (OER). The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a private foundation that makes grants to expand access to learning materials, defines OER as: Teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been…

"Open educational resources" (OER) are educational resources that are available to anyone free of cost and under an open licence to allow others to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute them with few or no restrictions. In 2012, the World OER Congress saw the adoption of the Paris OER Declaration, which calls on governments…

The study derives from a multi-year project implemented by OER Africa. The project sought to understand how OER might be used as a catalyst for pedagogical transformation in African universities. Within a nondeterminist and interpretivist theoretical framework and an over-arching project methodology of participatory action research, the study made…

Open education, including the use of open educational resources (OER) and the adoption of open education practice, has the potential to challenge educators to change their practice in fundamental ways. This paper forms part of a larger study focusing on higher education educators' learning from and through their engagement with OER. The first part…

Open educational resources are not available "as such". Their provision relies on a technological infrastructure of related services that can be described as an informational ecosystem. A closed informational ecosystem keeps educational resources within its boundary. An open informational ecosystem relies on the concurrence of…

Access to quality educational materials is a challenge in many parts of the world, including in some developed countries. The emergence of open educational resources (OER) is a landmark development in the history of education. OER support the notion of knowledge as a social product and education for all as a human right. The Commonwealth of…

Open educational resources (OER) as an innovation to share educational resources has been influential in past decade and expected to bring changes to higher education worldwide. There is, however, very limited literature on OER usage, especially from the perspective of college students in developing countries, who are often projected as the…

This paper explores the potential of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) in helping achieve women's empowerment in the developing world. Our evidence comprises the Open Education Research Hub open dataset, featuring survey responses from 7,700 educators, formal and informal learners from 175 countries concerning…

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…

Open Educational Resources (OER) emerged within the context of open education which is typically characterized by the sharing of knowledge and resources and the exchange of ideas. Unisa as a mega open distance learning (ODL) university has publicly communicated its intention to take part in the use and creation of OER. As global and local…

In this paper, 218 U.S. faculty responses regarding Open Educational Resources (OER) were qualitatively analyzed. Ten categories emerged in the coding process. The top three categories that indicated barriers to the adoption of OER were "need more information" (faculty wanted more information before they would be willing to adopt OER),…

Lofty ed-tech visions are always tempered by reality. Unexpected problems that arose during a launch of a 1-to-1 computing program and ambitious digital curriculum initiative in Los Angeles led to the dialing back of the effort. Financial, legal, and managerial repercussions continue to swirl in the wake. These problems should not prevent schools…

In the past year, Open Educational Resources have been a focus of policymakers and stakeholders in North Dakota. As a result, North Dakota University System (NDUS) faculty are more aware of the term open educational resources (OER) than their counterparts in national public institutions and all sectors of higher education. In addition, North…