What about OERs, are they suitable to help solve current problems?
Open educational resources are huge news in the world of higher education, and are at the helm of a burgeoning open education movement.
First emerging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare project in 2001, open educational resources have risen in prominence to shape major international policy initiatives and to draw significant research funding. The European Commission, for example, is running a public consultation on “Opening Up Education” that will explore the need for European Union action to promote the use of OERs in education. In the UK, The Open University was recently awarded a $1.5 million (£939,000) grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to examine the impact of OERs on learning and teaching. Meanwhile, numerous OER repositories and OER producers are appearing on the web, and their models for sharing content are influencing the strategies of educational institutions worldwide.
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