Raises standard of open educational resources is a significant milestone in the world

Todays modern technology generates it possible to share information and knowledge around the
world and It is in the interest of human development to share information and education as much
and as widely as possible. Open Educational Resources are educational resources and materials
offered freely and openly via the Internet for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix,
customize, and redistribute. Sian Harris (2012). Open Educational Resources contain Learning
resources eg journals, Tools eg, software, and Implementation resources eg Intellectual property
licenses. OER is a relatively new movement in education; learning institutions and learners as
well as educators are driving its development. Smith, M.S. and Casserly, C.M. (2006. OER
provides an alternative to the rising costs of education and textbooks.

Open Educational resources

Content

Tools Implementation
Material published for resources
learning

Open sources software Learning References License Tools Teaching

Resource Practices
s

Content Development Social software. Learning Management

management tools Eg,Wikis system. Eg Moodle
system

Concept map of Open Educational Resources.

Open Educational Resources offer flexible alternative and a low-cost to publisher textbooks for
use in online and face-to-face classrooms. It helps to educator to download legally from a wide
collection of readily-available learning resources on the web and customize their teaching to
their students needs while significantly reducing students schooling costs in the expenses raises
period.
Table 1: Significance of open educational resources

Advantages Disadvantages
Resource rich Attribution issues
Cost savings on textbooks Complication in curriculum development
Flexibility Limited conversion to participation
Universal design for learning Student access to technology
Although the OER is very recent technology, nowadays it is the subject of growing
interest. It is a global development, although most resources are currently produced in
developed countries. Eg America, Britian particularly those countries based in
institutions, encourage transparency and can stimulate more quality control and
competition to benefit individual learners Furthermore, the development seems to grow
both top-down and bottom-up; new projects are started at individual teachers and
institutional level and typically researchers use and produce OER on their own initiative.
Strengthens traditional academic values of sharing and collaborative creation of
knowledge is the OER concept. From the viewpoint of individual educators and
researchers, publishing teaching materials openly offered a number of possible positive
effects, although barriers imposed by copyright law and the lack in many universities of a
reward system that fosters the development and use of OER remain important inhibitors.
Davis, P. M. (2011). The rapid growth of open access publishing of research articles is an
obvious sign of this view. Still, many individual educator, researchers and teachers, as
well as institutions, seem insufficiently well informed on copyright issues. Increased
awareness and clear policies on copyright should be high on the programm of every
higher education institution. OECD. (2007). Awareness of practice OER need for translate
of learning resources and the application of Web Access Initiative rules when designing
websites and learning resources. Developing modern technologies and their impact on the
role of Universities, as well as ethical risks and the want to rethink long-term
preservation of digital data are also issues of importance for the OER movement.

Prepared By:-
G.Umakanthan (OUSL Batticaloa)

References

1. Sian Harris (August 2012), "Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic
libraries", A report on a roundtable commissioned by SAGE, in association with the British
Library.
2. Davis, P. M. (2011). "Open access, readership, citations: a randomized controlled trial of
scientific journal publishing". The FASEB Journal 25 (7): 212934.
3. Smith, M.S. and Casserly, C.M. 2006. The promise of open educational resources. Change,
38(5): 817.
4. OECD. 2007. Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of open educational resources,
Paris: OECD.