Students studying at the Bookworms Cafe on Nov. 20, 2019

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:

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.