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About OER community
Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.
Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution.
In 2001, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in an unprecedented move, announced the release of nearly all its courses on the internet for free access. As the number of institutions offering free or open courseware increased, UNESCO organized the 1st Global OER Forum in 2002 where the term Open Educational Resources (OER) was adopted.
With the support of the Hewlett Foundation, UNESCO created a global OER Community wiki in 2005 to share information and work collaboratively on issues surrounding the production and use of Open Educational Resources.
This WSIS OER Commuity is the new UNESCO-supported Community encouraging practitioners, researchers, decision- and policy-makers, teachers, and learners to contribute their knowledge on OER.
Last updated 486 days ago by Igor Nuk
OER may benefit the people who wants to pursue the further education while engaging full time with the employer. I understand that the people in developed countries are benefitted from the open schools or universities. For those people in least developing or poorest countries is still a dream. Some of the people cannot go beyond the school education but gain the practical knowledge through their works and able to handle the higher responsibilities. Due to the academic qualifcation they always remain behinds with those people join them with the certificates with zero practical experiences. It creates a humiliation and spoil the working environment in the work place. Therefore, OER may play a vital role to enhance the academic skills or qualifactions of needy people to make them more responsible in nation's development.
Sanu Tamrakar 455 days ago
Hello Agastin,
I really like your comment especially the need to change 'educational administration'. What is the OER situation in your country? Have any of the large higher education institutions heard of OERs? Are they already using OERs? What are the specific OER problems they're having and how could UNESCO help?
We could even have a discussion on the Community home page. Look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Abel
Abel Caine 455 days ago
The open educational resources would definitely help the motivated learners. But the challenge lies in promoting access to internet. There is a need for change in the educational administration in developing countries.
AGASTIN BAULRAJ 455 days ago
Abel Caine
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Hello Sanu,
You may be interested to hear about the OER University. The goal is to provide a pathway for a learner to study OER courses (which will hopefully be free-of-cost) and apply to the OER-U for a rigorous assessment of their learning and possible award of a qualification.
The very 1st planning meeting was held just last Wednesday. There is a wealth of information on the website. The Project has a way to go before it is widely available but please feel free to contact Wayne Mackintosh, a fellow member of the OER Community, for more information.
I would really like to see the OER-U reach out to the 'millions' of teachers who have very low qualifications or none at all. The project could provide a viable if not vital opportunity to obtain qualifications to be betetr teachers for their students but to also advance their careers.
Please don't hesitate to start a discussion back on the OER Community home page on how a project like the OER University could benefit teachers in your country.
Regards,
Abel
UNESCO
Abel Caine 455 days ago