Open Educational Resources (OER)
Freely accessible, openly licensed educational materials that permit no-cost access, reuse, adaptation and redistribution by others.
Open Educational Resources (OER) represent a significant evolution in how knowledge systems operate in the digital age. These resources emerge from the intersection of information commons principles and educational practice, embodying key characteristics of open systems in their design and implementation.
At their core, OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under open licenses that permit free use and repurposing by others. This approach creates a positive feedback loop between content creators and users, enabling continuous improvement and adaptation.
The fundamental properties of OER include:
- Free and Open Access: No cost barriers to accessing materials
- Permission to Retain: Users can download and keep copies
- Permission to Reuse: Content can be used in various contexts
- Permission to Revise: Materials can be adapted and modified
- Permission to Remix: Different resources can be combined
- Permission to Redistribute: Sharing with others is permitted
These properties create a distributed system of educational resource production and distribution, challenging traditional hierarchical of educational publishing and control.
The OER movement connects to broader concepts of emergence in educational systems, as complex networks of educators and learners collaborate to create and improve resources. This demonstrates characteristics of self-organization, where decentralized actions lead to coherent and valuable educational materials.
From a systems thinking perspective, OER represent a shift from closed, proprietary educational resources to an open system that enables:
- information flow of educational content
- adaptive systems to learner needs
- resilience through distributed creation and maintenance
- network effects value creation
The movement faces several systemic challenges, including:
- Quality control in distributed creation
- Sustainable funding models
- Technical infrastructure needs
- Cultural barriers to adoption
OER demonstrate how complexity can emerge from simple rules and permissions, creating robust educational ecostures that evolve through collective intelligence and collaborative learning processes.
The future development of OER is closely tied to advances in digital commons and networked learning technologies, suggesting continued evolution toward more sophisticated and interconnected educational resource systems.
This model represents a significant shift from traditional scarcity-based to an abundance-based approach to educational resources, aligning with broader trends in information ecology and knowledge management practices.