Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.
The foundation of Open Education is Open Educational Resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere. “Open” permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials.
(Adapted from the SPARC guide to open education.)
Haley Walton, Librarian for Education and Open Scholarship, provides the Duke community with expertise finding, adapting, and adopting open educational resources (OER) and cultivating open practices in the classroom. Contact Haley to learn more about open education at Duke.
OER include textbooks, topic-specific learning tools for coursework, syllabi and lesson plans, videos, assignments, tests, and even whole courses created by other instructors and shared openly for others to modify and reuse in their own teaching.
They are published under open licenses that describe how materials can be used, reused, adapted, and shared in your own courses.
Open pedagogy is the use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning in the classroom and involve students actively in knowledge creation rather than as passive learners. It can include projects and assignments that the students publish openly for reuse for others as part of their coursework. It is a way to empower students to demonstrate how they have engaged with learning in a course.
