Lesson 10 - Trends in Open Learning

4. Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open educational resources are somewhat different from open learning, in that they are primarily content, while open learning includes both content and educational services, such as specially designed online materials, in-built learner support and assessment.

Open educational resources cover a wide range of online formats, including online textbooks, video-recorded lectures, YouTube clips, web-based textual materials designed for independent study, animations, and simulations, digital diagrams and graphics, some MOOCs, or even assessment materials such as tests with automated answers. OER can also include PowerPoint slides or pdf files of lecture notes. In order to be open educational resources, though, they must be freely available for at least educational use.