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Open Education

What is Open Education?

Open Education is a global movement to broaden access to education. SPARC defines Open Education as encompassing resources, tools, and practices that are free of legal, financial, and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared, and adapted in the digital environment. Open Educational Resources, Open Pedagogy, and Social Justice are the core of Open Education.

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are freely licensed and freely available for use in teaching and learning. Truly open resources typically meet the criteria of the 5 R’s developed by David Wiley. These include:

  • Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
  • Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  • Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
  • Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
  • Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Open Educational Resources are often born-digital resources, meaning they are authored and originate in a digital format. This is beneficial for instructors and students who are authoring new open educational resources, because advancements in technology and authoring resources such as Rebus Community, allow for ease of collaboration with colleagues, finding co-authors, contributors, editors, peer-reviewers, and copy editors remotely. These digital resources can be created with accessibility in mind from the beginning, ensuring that they are compatible with screen reader devices and other assistive technologies. OER availability as a digital learning resource allows for students to access the material anytime and anywhere, even downloading for offline use. 

For more information about licensing, finding, and using OER visit the Libraries’ Open Educational Resources page!

Beyond Textbook Affordability

Though a lot of discourse related to OER is centered around issues of textbook affordability in higher education, it’s important to remember that OER can range from textbooks to images, course modules, worksheets, videos, test/quiz questions, audio lectures or podcasts, interactive games or simulations, and entire courses themselves.

Open Education in K-12

OER are not limited to higher education settings!  If you’re a teacher educator, educator-in-training, or an established educator in Grades K-12, Open Educational Resources can be impactful for your students. Here in Wisconsin, the Department of Public Instruction developed the Wisconsin Digital Learning Plan, which outlines a vision of digital education in Wisconsin including the integration of OER. WISELearn is a digital library and network created from this vision, as an index of OER created by Wisconsin educators.

Open Pedagogy

Open Pedagogy sometimes referred to as Open Educational Practice (OEP), is the pedagogical practice of inviting and engaging students in the co-creation of knowledge in a course through the development, adaptation, or use of open educational resources.

One such Open Educational Practice is the renewable assignment, which are assignments that students create for the explicit purpose of sharing as OER. This can include student-authored textbook chapters, a collaborative course Wiki, a student-generated test question bank, and more. For more examples of Open Educational Practices visit the Open Pedagogy Notebook.

For examples of Open Pedagogy in action at UW-Madison, check out the in-progress Pressbook Connection and Collaboration: Open Educational Practices at UW-Madison.