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The Role of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Making Education Available to All

A Principal's Reflections

I recently had the honor of traveling to the MIT campus in Boston and participating in a panel discussion on Open Education Resources (OER) at The Sixth Conference of MIT''s Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC) with three illustrious advocates of these open resources: Nicole Allen, Philipp Schmidt, and panel moderator Steve Carson.

OER 259
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Football, Commons, and the Long-term Sustainability of OER

Iterating Toward Openness

We have a similar problem in the open educational resources (OER) space. Many people are in the habit of referring to OER as a commons. OER are not like the shared resources at the center of traditional commons. However, OER are not CPRs. This principle fails to apply to OER in multiple ways. We could go on.

OER 103
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Thoughts on OER and Cost Savings

Iterating Toward Openness

Yesterday, Phil Hill wrote about OpenStax’s new method for calculating the savings students see when their faculty adopt OER. Savings from OER should be calculated as “the amount of money students would have spent” minus “the amount of money students did spend.” Or whatever the number is?

OER 74
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Of Progress, Problems, and Partnerships

Iterating Toward Openness

In 2012 Kim Thanos and I founded Lumen Learning because, through our Gates-funded work on the Kaleidoscope Project, we had seen first-hand how hard it was for faculty to replace publisher materials with OER. MIT OCW, Wikipedia, Khan Academy), but in 2010 it was difficult to find a faculty member who had made the switch.

OER 113
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Do We Need a National Open Education Strategy?

Iterating Toward Openness

To hear some OER advocates describe it today in 2024, the same format that was being used in the late 2000s – traditional-looking textbooks published under open licenses – is the state of the art when it comes to open educational resources. OER have also been used as part of personalized, interactive courseware systems, too.

Strategy 133
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U.S. K-12 Educational Technology Policy: What is the Federal Role? (Part II)

Doug Levin

In so doing, it is important to note that for all intents and purposes, the new educational technology program described in ESSA represents a dramatic turnaround in direction for Congress, which last funded a federal educational technology program in 2010 at the request of former U.S.

Policies 258
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The Winners and Filmstrips of An (Almost) Decade in Education Technology

Edsurge

OER and open books. Two that shine are OER/open books and learning analytics. In the 2010s, faculty started to take back their intellectual power from the publishers by creating and sharing materials that could be freely used, adapted and re-mixed (with appropriate creative commons licensing). Learning analytics. Digital badges.