Early Childhood Education and Care: Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely accessible teaching, learning, and research materials in any format that are in the public domain or are available under an open license that allows their free use and re-purposing by others.

Users can:

The 5 R's - Source http://opencontent.org/definition/

 Use OER to provide an affordable, accessible, and engaging learning experience.

... Access, Equity and Pedagogy 

Benefits:

• Students, staff and everyone anywhere can access OER at any time for free
• OERs can supplement textbooks and lectures where deficiencies in information are apparent
• OER has demonstrated an increase in student learning while removing barriers of accessibility and affordability
• Develop digital literacies
• Open for addressing diversity and inclusion
• Persistent availability of resources 
• Academics/users can customize/adapt to their context/needs
• Fast availability of material may increase the timeliness and relevance of the material being presented
• Reduces inequality to education - supports Sustainable Development Goal 4

 Challenges in using OER

• Quality Assurance

OER release should be subject to ongoing Quality Assurance process which is transparent and fair, however this is not always the case.

• Sustainability

Without preservation of these often one-time start-up OER projects, the initial funding will end after a few years and sustaining the resources will be expensive, the resources may become outdated and the quality gone.

• Lack of understanding about OER

Many do not understand the potential of OER and feel that it threatens their ownership of intellectual property. Also, it takes time to creat and/or locate existing OER.