Open Education Week : Home

Open Education Global is a member-based, global, non-profit supporting the development and use of open education around the world to:

• expand access to education enabling every person on earth to access and contribute
• improve the quality of education
• make education more affordable
• improve student success
• foster collaboration and sharing through co-creation of education materials and the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute them
• generate pedagogical innovation using the collaborative, interactive culture of the Internet
• foster international partnerships and a global participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation

Current areas of focus for OE Global and its members include:

• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
• Open Access (OA)
• Open Data
• Open Science
• Open Education Technology
• Open Practices

Attribution: Information was taken from the What We Do section of the Open Education Global website which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

According to Open Education Global: 

OER are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

OER come with 5R permissions including the permission to:

1. Retain – the right to create, own, and control copies of the content;
2. Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways;
3. Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself;
4. Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new;
5. Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, the revisions, or the remixes with others.

OER can include textbooks, instructional materials, interactive simulations, lesson plans, full courses, and even complete degrees (often called Z-Degrees). A popular example of OER is open textbooks that are funded, published and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost offering significant savings, compared to expensive proprietary textbooks. OER provide academic freedom to customize, localize, translate, and update as required. OER expand and enhance the academic offering of an institution.

See our OER @ NC Faculty: A Quickstart Guide for Faculty for more information on the importance of OER.

OER are typically stored and distributed through web sites, platforms or repositories that provide search, view and download capabilities.

See our OER Subject Guide for a list of OER repositories.

Attribution: Information was taken from the What We Do section of the Open Education Global website which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 

Introducing our OER Info Minute video series!  Quick clips to introduce you to the world of OER@NC:

 Solve clues to escape from a world of expensive textbooks 

Escape and enter to win a $50 gift card

Access an alternative version of this activity

Did you know that ncLibraries' has its own digital repository that houses open content?

Interested in submitting your own work to the digital repository?  Email: Kent Reynolds. 

This guide and its contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.