Hi Everyone,
We’re happy to bring you a brand new post in our TTT Blog, a place where we provide you with the useful tips and dynamic resources aimed at supporting you in teaching excellence.
As the mid-semester is now winding down into the end-of-semester examination phase to an end, we continue our exploration of inclusive education, by taking a closer look at open education and Open Educational Resources (OERs). Students from various backgrounds, with varying circumstances, and preferences are enrolled in your courses, and while one of the goals of education is to ensure that all students learn, the reality is that not all students have the access to learning experiences and resources. How can you help in this regard? This blog post will certainly help you!
A – What is Open Education?
Open Education is an approach that makes education accessible to everyone by removing financial, technical, legal (and other) barriers or limitations. According to Opensource.com, “Open education is a philosophy about the way people should produce, share and build on knowledge [in which] everyone in the world should have access to high-quality educational experiences and resources [and] eliminate barriers to this goal.” The purpose of open education is to widen access to learning opportunities and empower individuals to engage in lifelong learning.
Collaboration is tantamount to open education. This collaboration helps to generate new knowledge and innovations from which others can continue to learn. As such, the Open Education Consortium states that “sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built.” It is on this premise that Open Educational Resources (OERs) become very useful in the continuous and/or collaborative generation and sharing of teaching and learning materials for lifelong learning.
B – What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)?
As seen in the illustration below, OERs are materials for teaching or learning that are either in the public domain or have been released under a license that allows them to be freely used, changed, or shared with others. As educational practitioners, OERs allow you to freely use and re-use materials at no cost, and without the need to ask for permission. Unlike traditional copyrighted resources, OERs have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to allow for re-use and adaptation of his/her/its work. By no means new to the educational circuit, OERs may include instructional and activity-based materials such as textbooks, lecture slides, podcasts, videos, quizzes, H5P, and even entire online courses. OERs can be used and/or adapted as a supplement to some of your course content.
C – What are the Benefits of OERs?
Whether you are a content creator or content user/consumer, OERs provide a range of benefits in teaching and learning. The following are some of these benefits:
1. Expanded access to learning: Students can access OERs at any time and from anywhere in the world. They can also access these materials repeatedly.
2. Augmentation of class materials: OERs can be used to supplement textbooks and lectures where deficiencies in information are evident. In so doing, OERs help to overcome the limitations of textbooks.
3. Enhancement of regular course content: OERs in the form of multimedia material such as videos, can accompany text, and thus allow for multimodal instruction. Presenting information in multiple formats may help students to learn more easily and it increases retention.
4. Cost Effective: The use of OERs, instead of traditional textbooks or course packs, can significantly reduce the cost of course materials for students. It is also a more cost-effective way to improve your course with updated content and activities.
5. Continually improved resources: Unlike textbooks and other static sources of information, OERs can be improved quickly through direct editing by users or through solicitation and incorporation of user-feedback. You may even consider using an existing OER, and adapting it for a class, and make the modified OER available for others to use.
While there are some disadvantages regarding the use of OERs, such as language or cultural barriers and quality issues, many of these disadvantages can be avoided if the OERs are used according to the appropriate licences.
D – OERs: Use and Licences
Many OERs are under a Creative Commons (CC) license. CC is a popular licensing system or framework for managing the use, reuse and/or adaptation of online resources. It reflects the permissions and terms for reuse (if any). There are 6 types of CC Licenses ranging from reuse and simply cite/give attribution to no use without specific permission from the copyright holder. More specifically, CC licences allow:
1. Creators to choose how to make their works available and under what conditions
2. Users to understand the conditions under which a work may be used.
E – The CETL’s Teaching and Learning Week – Open Access
The CETL is happy to announce its collaboration with several open education specialists for its annual Teaching and Learning Week, scheduled for 14th – 16th April 2025. The theme of this series of events is Open Access, and comprises a series of online training events in open education. If you have not registered for any of the events yet, there’s still time and opportunity to register for the next session in our Teaching and Learning Week via the following link:
1. Open Access: Integrating Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Your Course – (Wednesday 16th April, 2025 @ 1:00 – 3:30 PM)
This interactive session will guide educators through the essentials of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and how to effectively integrate them into their courses. Whether you’re interested in adopting existing open content or creating your own, this session will provide a practical roadmap. Participants will explore what are OERs, the benefits of open access, how to find and evaluate quality open educational resources, and how to navigate open licenses. Participants will also be introduced to tools for locating, adapting, and developing OERs, while also covering strategies for alignment with course objectives and ensuring accessibility and inclusivity.
The aforementioned events in our Open Access Teaching and Learning Week are all geared towards training educational stakeholders (teaching, administrative and support staff, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students) in key skills in effectively inclusive education.
We hope the aforementioned resources are helpful.
Should you need any further assistance, or would like to let us know if these blog posts are helpful to in any way, please feel free to contact us.
Regards,
The Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL),
The University of the West Indies (UWI),
St. Augustine.
Previous TTT Posts you may also like:
- MyeLearning Access and Support
- Myelearning, Resources, Activities and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and H5P
- Active Learning and MyeLearning Activities
- SECTIONS for Technology Selection
- Research and the Power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)h
- Formative Assessments and the MyeLearning GradeBook
- Aligning Learning Outcomes with Assessments
- Importance of a Community of Practice (COP)
- The Tenets of Inclusive Education