Lesson 10 - Trends in Open Learning

There are many ‘repositories’ of open educational resources (see for instance, for post-secondary education,  MERLOT, OER Commons, and for k-12, Edutopia). The Open Professionals Education Network has an excellent guide to finding and using OER.

However, when searching for possible open educational resources on the web, check to see whether or not the resource has a Creative Commons license or a statement giving permission for re-use. It may be common practice to use free (no cost) resources without worrying unduly about copyright, but there are risks without a clear license or permission for re-use. For instance, many sites, such as OpenLearn, allow only individual, personal use for non-commercial purposes, which means providing a link to the site for students rather than integrating the materials directly into your own teaching. If in any doubt about the right to re-use, check with your library or intellectual property department.