What Is Open Education?
"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. Open Education maximizes the power of the Internet to make education more affordable, accessible and effective." -- definition from SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
Three Pathways to Open Education
Open Educational Resources (OER)
"Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others." -- definition from UNESCO
Open Pedagogy
"The set of pedagogical practices that include engaging students in content creation and making learning accessible is known as open pedagogy." -- definition from Abbey Elder's The OER Starter Kit
Open pedagogy is an evolving practice. For more about the discussions about what open pedagogy is, see:
- What is Open Pedagogy? by David Wiley
- April Open Perspective: What is Open Pedagogy? from Year of Open
Open Courseware
"An OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high-quality college and university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content.
OpenCourseWare are free and openly licensed, accessible to anyone, anytime via the internet." -- definition from the Open Education Consortium (now OE Global)
Contact
For further assistance in exploring open education options for your classes, contact Student Success Librarian Zach Claybaugh.
email: zachariah.claybaugh@uconn.edu
phone: (860) 486-1253
Also, be sure to visit the OER at UConn guide for subject-specific OER, open-access content, and affordable instructional resources.