Research Guides: Open Educational Resources Overview: Guidelines for Open Educational Resources

Where are open educational resources being used?

Prime Minister David Cameron announced in February 2013 that more UK universities are joining Futurelearn, the UK's first provider of free, open online courses (with the British Library). In both the UK and US, there are hundreds or thousands of free, open online courses being used; increasingly we are seeing other countries, like Brazil and India, start to become heavy users and hotbeds for open source and open educational resources too.

Unesco has advocated for the use of open source and open educational resources worldwide. And, in December 2012 a UN trade group said that governments should seize open source opportunities and become less reliant on large-scale software manufacturers.

Fox, C. (2013, April 9). A guide to free and open source education. . Retrieved June 10, 2014, from http://opensource.com/education/13/4/guide-open-source-education

Why open source?

All educators, administrators, and students too, should read and pass along this short note on Why should open source software be used in schools? Information like this helps begin the process of understanding, gets people on board, and can make the difference between action and talking.

Fox, C. (2013, April 9). A guide to free and open source education. Retrieved June 10, 2014, from http://opensource.com/education/13/4/guide-open-source-education

Open Educational Resources

Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
Curriki
Curriki is a nonprofit K-12 global community for teachers, students, and parents to create, share, and find free learning resources that enable true personalized learning.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. They are a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.
Open Source Education Foundation
An organization that helps disseminate knowledge.
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) actively promotes open source software by educating developers, decision makers, and users about the advantages of open source software and collaboration techniques
OSS Watch
OSS Watch provides unbiased advice and guidance on the use, development, and licensing of free software, open source software, and open source hardware.
School of Open
Recently launched by Creative Commons, the School of Open offers courses on the meaning, application, and impact of "openness."
SchoolForge.net
SchoolForge's mission is to unify independent organizations that advocate, use, and develop open educational resources. They advocate the use of open texts and lessons, open curricula, free software and open source in education.
SourceForge
SourceForge is an Open Source community resource dedicated to helping open source projects be as successful as possible. They thrive on community collaboration to help us create a premiere resource for open source software development and distribution.

Open Educational Resource Databases and Search Engines

Academic Earth
Over 1,500 video lectures from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.
JISC
Joint Information Systems Committee works on behalf of UK higher education and is involved in many open resources and open projects including digitizing British newspapers from 1620-1900!
OEDb
OEDb is a comprehensive online education directory for both free and for-credit learning options. They offer up-to-date, detailed program information from accredited online colleges for degree seekers and categorize free online college courses from well-known universities and providers.
OER Commons
Over 40,000 open educational resources from elementary school through to higher education; many of the elementary, middle, and high school resources are aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
Open Content
A blog, definition, and game of open source as well as a friendly search engine for open educational resources from MIT, Stanford, and other universities with subject and description listings.