Open Educational Resources

Why are you interested in OERs? What can we do with them that we cannot do under our current system?

OERs, like blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other ideas and tools are daily blips in the long term trend of how we are interacting differently with information and with each other. OERs have not yet achieved divine status. I don’t think they will.

OER projects, unlike learning object initiatives, can accrue tangible benefits to educational institutions, such as student recruitment and marketing. Highlighting these benefits, it is argued, provides an opportunity to link OER initiatives to core institutional priorities. In addition to providing a possible route to financial sustainability, this characteristic of OER may help to foster the significant changes in practice and culture long sought by promoters of both learning objects and OERs.

The BC Commons license is similar to the Creative Commons license but limits sharing to the local context of BC’s public post-secondary system. Resources licensed via BC Commons are available to BC public post-secondary faculty and staff only. This option provides developers with an opportunity to experience sustainable development benefits through sharing on a local level, among peers, before considering the larger global context. Over 90% of OPDF developers have chosen the BC Commons license.