The Open Educational Resources Movement:: Free learning for all students

Abstract

In recent years, the term Open Educational Resources (OER) has emerged, aiming to promote open access to digital educational resources that are available online for everyone at a global level [1]. The term was first adopted by UNESCO [2], which has defined Open Educational Resources (OERs) as the “technology-enabled, open provision of educational resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes”. With regard to this broad definition, a number of narrower definitions of OERs have been proposed by different OER initiatives, which consider OERs similar to [3]: “full courses, open courseware and content, educational modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests and assessments, open source software tools, and any other tools and materials used to support teaching or learning”.