WHAT ARE OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational resources, i.e. teaching and learning materials, which are provided free of charge. They may be passed on and (mostly) modified, which is determined with the help of Creative Commons licenses. In addition to free access to education, OER also serves the further development of teaching/learning materials for different target groups and disciplines. In this way, it is possible to gain insights into the teaching practices of others and to support the exchange of information.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a special form of OER. In theory, an unlimited number of participants can be involved in this form of online course. In MOOCs, as in other courses, proof of achievement can be obtained. Typical components of MOOCs are e-lectures, online testing, forums, wikis and more. A MOOC thus combines various digital materials and social media tools as part of a didactic overall concept. The aim is for the participants to also develop content in a collaborative manner and to achieve partly self-imposed learning goals.

Critical-reflexive media education combined with concepts for the promotion of information and media literacy are of great importance in the OER theme. In particular, information scientists, librarians, media educators and other actors in this environment make a decisive contribution to the development or improvement of structured repositories in the OER community. discoverability, use and exchange of OER materials.

Initiatives in Germany and Austria are already well documented. Below we refer to the respective websites and offer a selection of further literature and links.

Information point OERinfo

Link collection of German education servers to OER

Various white papers on OER
School, university, further education/adult education More

OER-MuMiW
Makers and multipliers in continuing training – Qualification measure for OER expert More

Mapping OER
Practical framework for Germany More

OER-Atlas 2016 – Open Educational Resources in German-speaking countries – an overview of actors and projects. Swiss projects are listed on p. 59 and the SIG OER on p. 80. more

Feasibility study
Building and operating OER infrastructures in education More

mooin
MOOC platform from oncampus (University of Applied Sciences Lübeck) More

HOOU
Hamburg Open Online University More

OERlabs
(Teacher’s Office) Training students together for OER (project of the University of Cologne) More

Jointly
Cooperation and support for OER projects and actors with a focus on IT, law, didactics and production More

Free University of Berlin
Digital teaching and learning resources More

OER repository Baden-Württemberg Central repository of the universities of Baden-Württemberg More

Virtual campus Rhineland-Palatinate
Self-test and gamification tools as OER More

OER Librarian Network Germany
Networking, exchange of information and experience, development of common action concepts More

Open Education Austria
Project of Austrian universities for the joint development of a nat. Infrastructure for OER More

iMooX
MOOC Platform of the University of Graz More

Recommendations for the integration of Open Educational Resources at universities in Austria
Working group “Open Educational Resources” of the Forum neue Medien in der Lehre Austria (fnm-austria). Ebner, Martin; Freisleben-Teutscher, Christian F.; Gröblinger, Ortrun; Kopp, Michael; Rieck, Katharina; Beautiful, Sandra; Seitz, Peter; Seissl, Maria, Ofner, Sabine; Zwiauer Charlotte (2016) More

The Open Science Movement and its Importance for Scientific Libraries: An Analysis of Position Papers and Development Perspectives
In: Berlin Handouts on Library and Information Science; 428. Berlin: Institute for Library and Information Science of the Humboldt University of Berlin. Gerdes, Thomas (2018) More

Find free teaching materials, use them legally, make and share them yourself. All about Open Educational Resources
Muuß-Merholz, Jöran (2018) More

Opening up Education. A Support Framework for Higher Education Institutions
JRC Science for Policy Report; Inamorato dos Santos, Andrea; Punie, Yves; Castano Munoz, Jonathan (2016) More

Educational Resources” – innovative driving force for development and education? The state of implementation of a real utopia in the field of education

In: Elsen, Susanne; Aluffi Pentini, Anna (eds.): Social awakening, real utopias and work on the social. Bolzano: bu,press; 227-250. Arnold, Patricia (2013) View (PDF)

Open, Free, Good – Open Educational Resources
In: Blog of the author edacttik. Luka Peters on teaching and learning with digital media. Peters, Luka (2013) More

Open Educational Resources Guide for Libraries and Information Institutions
In: handbuch.io; Hanover: Technical Information Library. Bartsch, Caroline; Brauser, Melanie; Bursky, Julian; Kirtyan, Uta; Koschinski, Christoph; Mußmann, Wolf-Dietrich; Richter, Astrid; Stummeyer, Sabine; Zander; Carolin (2016) More

Open educational resources: freely accessible and usable
In: Wilbers, K.; Hohenstein, (ed.): E-Learning Manual. Expert knowledge from science and practice. Strategies, instruments, case studies. 39. Erg.-Lfg.; Ebner, M.; Schön, S. (2011) More

Open Educational Resources as a Lifelong Learning Strategy using the example of TU Graz
Ebner, M.; Stöckler-Penz, C. (2011) More

Open Access – Open Access, Open Educational Resources and Copyright
In: L3T; Mruck, Katja; Günter Mey, Peter Purgathofer, Sandra Schön, Nicolas Apostolopoulos (2011) More

Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education
Guide to Open Educational Resources OER in Higher Education; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2011) View (PDF)

The OER SchoolBook – Feasibility Study on the Use/Implementation of Textbooks as a Free Educational Resource
In: Ebner, Martin; Beautiful, Sandra (eds).: O3R – Contributions to open educational resources. Volume 8. Vlaj, Gernot (2014) More

What makes OER projects successful? An analysis of success factors of open education resource (OER) projects in the school context
In: Ebner, Martin; Beautiful, Sandra (eds).: O3R – Contributions to open educational resources. Volume 9. Stadler, Martina (2015) More

Academic teaching needs more “open educational practices” for dealing with “Open Educational Resources” – a plea
In: Journal of Higher Education Development. ZFHE, Jg. 8 / No. 4 (November 2013). Mayrberger, Kerstin; Hofhues, Sandra (2013) More

To OER or not to OER? A question for academic libraries
Paper persented at: IFLA WLIC 2016 Columbus, OH – Connections. Collaboration. Community in Session 101 – Poster Sessions. Stummmeyer, Sabine (2016) More

Open Education
In: Openness – Synergy. Specialist magazine for digitalization in teaching. No. 2, p. 14-19. Deimann, Markus (2016) More

Basics of OER

 

(Explained) Videos/Podcasts

 

Focus Quality of OER

 

Communities

Facebook group OER

 

Search for OER (Repositories)

 

Create OER yourself

 

Search for images for OER

 

Search for music for OER

 

OER Conferences

 

MOOCs to OER

 

OER in continuing education and adult education

This post is also available in: German Italian