One of the most popular definitions of open educational resources (OER), shared by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, states that OER “are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” Unlike proprietary educational resources, such as textbooks traditionally adopted by state and local educational agencies, OER can be regularly updated and reused in a variety of settings to ensure that instructional materials continue to be relevant for students.
A national survey conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group (2017) found that 16% of school districts are using openly licensed curricular materials. As this work grows, and more educators integrate proprietary, free, and openly-licensed digital content, OER stakeholders have tracked the progress of this movement and documented how states and districts are leveraging OER to benefit students and teachers. Some of the most beneficial impacts include: empowered teachers, expanded access to high-quality materials, reinvested funds, and a more collaborative culture.
Empowered teachers: OER initiatives have an opportunity to enhance teacher collaboration and student learning, especially when coordinated at the school or district level. This is most impactful when the OER implementation process recognizes teachers as creative professionals with subject matter, design, and pedagogical expertise. When approached this way, the process enables those in the classroom to determine which resources most support the unique needs of their students. While teachers benefit from this flexibility to mold learning experiences that traditional learning materials may not support, students also benefit from more personalized learning opportunities. OER implementation has also helped increase teachers’ proficiency with their standards and curricula.
Expanded access to high-quality materials: OER provide districts with powerful flexibility to develop engaging curricula tailored to local contexts and student interests. Additionally, teachers are able to select and curate learning materials that are culturally diverse and representative of their students. And because open licenses permit free distribution, high-quality learning materials can reach wider student populations.
Reinvested funds towards personalized student learning and professional development: By relying less on proprietary learning materials, districts can reallocate a significant portion of their budget. The dollars saved can be used to accelerate the transition to digital learning through supports for a robust technology infrastructure, new leadership roles and professional development for educators who create or curate OER, and expanded personalized learning opportunities for students.
A more collaborative culture: States and districts interested in OER can learn from an established network of educators involved in the work. A successful transition to OER is challenging for a single district to accomplish without this access to external wisdom of practice. The PK-12 OER community offered additional support to states and districts by sharing instructional resources, lessons learned, and best practices. Community members — including teachers, state and district leaders, researchers, and nonprofits — were and continue to be enthusiastic about reaching out to those new to OER implementation.
The edtech landscape, particularly with generative AI, is evolving so quickly that developers, let alone educators, are struggling to keep up. Despite this, a group of innovative build4good college interns and mentors/experts took up the challenge last month.
With a growing interest in the educational space focused on designing accessible and inclusive digital learning opportunities through materials and digital public infrastructure, developers, educators, and researchers need to understand the experiences of those students who are most deprived of equitable outcomes in education.
To better understand the factors needed to ensure the longevity of OER, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and New America identified and convened members of a growing “PK-12 OER Learning Network” on March 9, 2018, and June 23, 2018. Drawing from each member’s unique perspective and expertise, this learning network identified and dove into four key focus questions.
By investing time and professional learning into preparing teachers to both better understand culturally relevant pedagogy, and to use OER as a tool for teaching it, schools could support students where they often need it most.
Research shows that students learn best when they have educational materials that reflect their own backgrounds and open windows for seeing people who are different from themselves. But where do these educational materials come from? How do teachers find them? And could the use of openly licensed materials help fill the gaps?
This idea drives the work we do with OER and queer inclusivity and seeing the message mirrored across the conference spoke to the profound need for constant self-analyzing and interrogating. Though it sounds difficult, this work really can start with a single question—Whose knowledge are we talking about?
When the instructional materials available to districts are insufficient, lack quality or standards alignment, or don’t reflect the diverse perspectives students need to see, what do districts do? They often try to buy their way out of these problems, or just dig in to the resources that are easily available. But some of the bravest districts embrace the challenge and work with their teachers and other talent to find a better way forward.
The era of remote instruction brought on by the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated many challenges that schools and families already faced, but perhaps none as widespread as the digital divide—or the gap between those with reliable internet access and those without.
OER repositories can serve as hubs for digital materials, allowing teachers to access and share culturally relevant materials across schools, districts, and even states. Where traditional materials can be costly, difficult to implement, and designed without diverse needs in mind, OER can help fill the gaps.
New America has curated this list of OER to provide you with a simple way to search and discover free and openly licensed resources.
Welcome to Revise, Remix, Redesign, the PreK-12 Open Educational Resources (OER) Podcast from the Education Policy Program at New America hosted by Kristina Ishmael.
Open Educational Resources are freely available educational materials that can be downloaded, customized, and shared without worrying about copyright. They can take many different forms, from comprehensive curriculum, similar to traditional series we know and use, to supplemental resources like individual learning objects that can be used on their own or curated into units for teaching and learning.
In each episode, Kristina interviews someone in the OER community to discuss everything from how states and districts started this work, along what it looks like in practice; the role teachers and school librarians play in curating and implementing; and even how content is developed.
The comprehensive resources function similarly to curricula that schools already use because the materials are scoped and sequenced and can be used as-is or edited and customized due to their open licenses. The supplemental resources are meant to be used in conjunction with other materials to round out the learning experience and can also be edited and customized.
What Is Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT)? Why is it relevant to student learning? An explainer article in Education Week references New America's Culturally Responsive Teaching report on the CRT integration in state professional teaching standards.
Students learn better, are more engaged, and are better served by education when the teaching materials take into account their experiences, identity, and cultural perspectives. Educators who are invested in culturally responsive education often find that commercial offerings either do not exist or are not adaptable to their needs. When they move beyond the realm of commercial publishing, a toolkit of copyright and open licensing knowledge can be useful in creating Open Educational Resources that can be authored centering specific student populations and adapted when needed. Open Educational Resources (OER) are free resources, including textbooks, activities, and supplemental resources.
This webinar examines specific hypotheticals and fair use cases where educators create culturally responsive learning materials that represent diverse student populations. It features panelists from the Virginia Department of Education, the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit, and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME).
The idea behind Open Educational Resources (OER) is simple but powerful—educational materials made freely and legally available on the Internet for anyone to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. These digital materials have the potential to give people everywhere equal access to our collective knowledge and provide many more people around the world with access to quality education by making lectures, books and curricula widely available on the Internet for little or no cost. By enabling virtually anyone to tap into, translate and tailor educational materials previously reserved only for students at elite universities, OER has the potential to jump start careers and economic development in communities that lag behind. Millions worldwide have already opened this educational lockbox, but if OER is going to democratize learning and transform the classroom and teaching, then it must move from the periphery of education practice to center stage.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.
Answers to frequently asked questions about open educational resources (OER) for K-12 educators. Prepared with support from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), Creative Commons (CC), Creative Commons – United States (CC-USA), the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).
The engine that runs OER is open licensing. Traditionally, materials are copyrighted by default when they are created. In order for a material to be openly licensed, the creator(s) have to designate it as open and could use a Creative Commons license to do so.
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges.
The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.