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Open Educational Resources Article Draft Edits
Open educational resources (OER) are part of a "range of processes" employed by researchers and educators to broaden access to scholarly and creative conversations. Although working definitions of the term OER may vary somewhat based on the context of their use, the 2019 definition provided by UNESCO provides shared language from which to begin shaping an understanding of their characteristics. The 2019 UNESCO definition describes OER as "teaching, learning and research materials that make use of appropriate tools, such as open licensing, to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement and repurposing by others for educational purposes."

The term was first coined at UNESCO's 2002 Forum on Open Courseware and designates:


 * "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."

Often cited is the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation term which used to define OER as:"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."The Hewlett Foundation updated its definition to:"'Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions'. The new definition explicitly states that OER can include both digital and non-digital resources. Also, it lists several types of use that OER permit, inspired by 5R activities of OER."5R activities/permissions were proposed by David Wiley, which include:


 * Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
 * Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
 * Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
 * Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
 * Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Users of OER are allowed to engage in any of these 5R activities, permitted by the use of an open license.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines OER as: "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences". (This is the definition cited by Wikipedia's sister project, Wikiversity.) By way of comparison, the Commonwealth of Learning "has adopted the widest definition of Open Educational Resources (OER) as 'materials offered freely and openly to use and adapt for teaching, learning, development and research'". The WikiEducator project suggests that OER refers "to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing'.

The above definitions expose some of the tensions that exist with OER:


 * Nature of the resource: Several of the definitions above limit the definition of OER to digital resources, while others consider that any educational resource can be included in the definition.
 * Source of the resource: While some of the definitions require a resource to be produced with an explicit educational aim in mind, others broaden this to include any resource which may potentially be used for learning.
 * Level of openness: Most definitions require that a resource be placed in the public domain or under a fully open license. Others require only that free use to be granted for educational purposes, possibly excluding commercial uses.

These definitions also have common elements, namely they all:


 * cover use and reuse, repurposing, and modification of the resources;
 * include free use for educational purposes by teachers and learners
 * encompass all types of digital media.

Given the diversity of users, creators and sponsors of open educational resources, it is not surprising to find a variety of use cases and requirements. For this reason, it may be as helpful to consider the differences between descriptions of open educational resources as it is to consider the descriptions themselves. One of several tensions in reaching a consensus description of OER (as found in the above definitions) is whether there should be explicit emphasis placed on specific technologies. For example, a video can be openly licensed and freely used without being a streaming video. A book can be openly licensed and freely used without being an electronic document. This technologically driven tension is deeply bound up with the discourse of open-source licensing. For more, see Licensing and Types of OER later in this article.

There is also a tension between entities which find value in quantifying usage of OER and those which see such metrics as themselves being irrelevant to free and open resources. Those requiring metrics associated with OER are often those with economic investment in the technologies needed to access or provide electronic OER, those with economic interests potentially threatened by OER, or those requiring justification for the costs of implementing and maintaining the infrastructure or access to the freely available OER. While a semantic distinction can be made delineating the technologies used to access and host learning content from the content itself, these technologies are generally accepted as part of the collective of open educational resources.

Since OER are intended to be available for a variety of educational purposes, most organizations using OER neither award degrees nor provide academic or administrative support to students seeking college credits towards a diploma from a degree granting accredited institution. In open education, there is an emerging effort by some accredited institutions to offer free certifications, or achievement badges, to document and acknowledge the accomplishments of participants.

In order for educational resources to be OER, they must have an open license. Many educational resources made available on the Internet are geared to allowing online access to digitised educational content, but the materials themselves are restrictively licensed. Thus, they are not OER. Often, this is not intentional. Most educators are not familiar with copyright law in their own jurisdictions, never mind internationally. International law and national laws of nearly all nations, and certainly of those who have signed onto the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), restrict all content under strict copyright (unless the copyright owner specifically releases it under an open license). The Creative Commons license is the most widely used licensing framework internationally used for OER.

Final published edits:

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.

The development and promotion of open educational resources is often motivated by a desire to provide an alternate or enhanced educational paradigm.

Definition and scope
Open educational resources (OER) are part of a "range of processes" employed by researchers and educators to broaden access to scholarly and creative conversations. Although working definitions of the term OER may vary somewhat based on the context of their use, the 2019 definition provided by UNESCO provides shared language useful for shaping an understanding of the characteristics of OER. The 2019 UNESCO definition describes OER as "teaching, learning and research materials that make use of appropriate tools, such as open licensing, to permit their free reuse, continuous improvement and repurposing by others for educational purposes."

While collaboration, sharing, and openness have "been an ongoing feature of educational" and research practices "past and present," the term "OER" was first coined to describe associated resources at UNESCO's 2002 Forum on Open Courseware, which determined that "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."

Often cited is the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation term which used to define OER as "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. The Foundation later updated its definition to describe OER as "teaching, learning and research materials in any medium -- digital or otherwise -- that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." Of note in that definition is the explicit statement that OER can include both digital and non-digal resources, as well as the inclusion of several types of use that OER permit, inspired by 5R activities of OER. . In a 2022 overview of how the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has supported open education since 2002, the Foundation describes OER as "freely licensed, remixable learning resources," further including the Creative Commons definition of OER as "teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities -- retaining, remixing, revising, reusing and redistributing the resources."

The 5R activities/permissions mentioned in the definitions above were proposed by David Wiley, and include:


 * Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
 * Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
 * Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
 * Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
 * Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Authors, creators, and communities may apply a range of licenses or descriptions such as those facilitated by Creative Commons or Local Contexts | TK Labels to their work to communicate to what extent they intend for downstream users to engage in the 5R activities or other collaborative research, creative and scholarly practices.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines OER as: "digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences". (This is the definition cited by Wikipedia's sister project, Wikiversity.) By way of comparison, the Commonwealth of Learning "has adopted the widest definition of Open Educational Resources (OER) as 'materials offered freely and openly to use and adapt for teaching, learning, development and research'". The WikiEducator project suggests that OER refers "to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing'.

The above definitions expose some of the tensions that exist with OER:


 * Nature of the resource: Several of the definitions above limit the definition of OER to digital resources, while others consider that any educational resource can be included in the definition.
 * Source of the resource: While some of the definitions require a resource to be produced with an explicit educational aim in mind, others broaden this to include any resource which may potentially be used for learning.
 * Level of openness: Most definitions require that a resource be placed in the public domain or under a fully open license. Others require only that free use to be granted for educational purposes, possibly excluding commercial uses.

These definitions also have common elements, namely they all:


 * cover use and reuse, repurposing, and modification of the resources;
 * include free use for educational purposes by teachers and learners
 * encompass all types of digital media.

Given the diversity of users, creators and sponsors of open educational resources, it is not surprising to find a variety of use cases and requirements. For this reason, it may be as helpful to consider the differences between descriptions of open educational resources as it is to consider the descriptions themselves. One of several tensions in reaching a consensus description of OER (as found in the above definitions) is whether there should be explicit emphasis placed on specific technologies. For example, a video can be openly licensed and freely used without being a streaming video. A book can be openly licensed and freely used without being an electronic document. This technologically driven tension is deeply bound up with the discourse of open-source licensing. For more, see Licensing and Types of OER later in this article.

There is also a tension between entities which find value in quantifying usage of OER and those which see such metrics as themselves being irrelevant to free and open resources. Those requiring metrics associated with OER are often those with economic investment in the technologies needed to access or provide electronic OER, those with economic interests potentially threatened by OER, or those requiring justification for the costs of implementing and maintaining the infrastructure or access to the freely available OER. While a semantic distinction can be made delineating the technologies used to access and host learning content from the content itself, these technologies are generally accepted as part of the collective of open educational resources.

Since OER are intended to be available for a variety of educational purposes, some organizations using OER neither award degrees nor provide academic or administrative support to students seeking college credits towards a diploma from a degree granting accredited institution. However, many degree granting institutions have intentionally embraced the use of OER for research, teaching and learning, seeing their use and creation as in aligning with academic or institutional mission statements. In open education, there is an emerging effort by some accredited institutions to offer free certifications, or achievement badges, to document and acknowledge the accomplishments of participants.

In order for educational resources to be OER, they must have an open license or otherwise communicate willingness for iterative reuse and/or modification. Many educational resources made available on the Internet are geared to allowing online access to digitised educational content, but the materials themselves are restrictively licensed. These restrictions may complicate the reuse and modification considered characteristic of OER. Often, this is not intentional, as educators and researchers may lack familiarity with copyright law in their own jurisdictions, never mind internationally. International law and national laws of nearly all nations, and certainly of those who have signed onto the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), restrict all content under strict copyright (unless the copyright owner specifically releases it under an open license). The Creative Commons license is a widely used licensing framework internationally used for OER.

Open Educational Practices Article Draft
[https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.559/ Nusbaum, A. T. (2020). Who Gets to Wield Academic Mjolnir?: On Worthiness, Knowledge Curation, and Using the Power of the People to Diversify OER. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1).]

[https://www.learntechlib.org/p/183580/ Cronin, C., & MacLaren, I. (2018). Conceptualising OEP: A review of theoretical and empirical literature in Open Educational Practices. Open Praxis, 10(2), 127-143.]

[https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctv3t5qh3.13.pdf DeRosa, R., & Robison, S. (2017). From OER to open pedagogy: Harnessing the power of open. Open: The philosophy and practices that are revolutionizing education and science, 115-124].

[http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/5161 Tietjen, P., & Asino, T. I. (2021). What Is Open Pedagogy? Identifying Commonalities. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 22(2), 185-204.]

Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J.L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4).

Paskevicius, M., & Irvine, V. (2019). Open Education and Learning Design: Open Pedagogy in Praxis. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2019(1).

Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., Chaffee, R., Darrow, J., Guilmett, J., Harper, S., & Hilton, B. (2019). Student Perceptions of Open Pedagogy: An Exploratory Study. Open Praxis, 11(3), 275-288.

[https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.584/# Lambert, S., & Czerniewicz, L. (2020). Approaches to Open Education and Social Justice Research. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1), 1. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.584]

[https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.565/?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Journal_of_Interactive_Media_in_Education_TrendMD_0 Bali, M., Cronin, C., & Jhangiani, R. S. (2020). Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1)].

[https://www.learntechlib.org/p/42198/ Hodgkinson-Williams, C., & Gray, E. (2009). Degrees of openness: The emergence of open educational resources at the University of Cape Town. International Journal of Education and Development Using ICT, 5(5), 101-116].

[https://www-jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.549/ Jenkins, J. J., Sánchez, L. A., Schraedley, M. A., Hannans, J., Navick, N., & Young, J. (2020). Textbook broke: Textbook affordability as a social justice issue. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1(3), 1].

Impact
Some scholars claim that the breadth of definitions through which OEP are described impairs researchers' ability to measure the impact of OEP. Others, however, have undertaken projects exploring and documenting OEP which demonstrate potential areas of impact. For instance, adopting OEP can lead to opportunities for collaborative learning through the affordances of Web 2.0 tools. OEP can support innovative pedagogy as an extension of teaching and learning practices. In this context, open also refers to the learning environment where learner's set their own objectives rather than being restricted by those set externally (a closed environment). Additionally, OEP has shown potential for use in addressing social justice issues through provision of increased access, modification for inclusion of diverse voices, and democratization of scholarly conversations.

OEP and Collaborative Learning
The presence of a shared knowledge creation experience is one characteristic included in most definitions of OEP. The networked participation which takes place as learners work together in a community to create knowledge can result in increased student engagement. Artifacts created contribute to the community beyond the walls of the classroom, something described in Knowledge Building theory as adding value to student work even beyond its use as an evaluation of student understanding.

OEP and Innovative Pedagogy
Much of the impact of OEP is a result of the "transformational role" of the collaboration taking place between instructors and students. Open educational practices can also provide the experience and tools to help bridge the gap between formal and informal learning, and potentially an open source curriculum or emergent curriculum. Use of these tools and experience facilitate innovative pedagogical practices resulting in benefits beyond simply mastering course content. For instance, Nusbaum describes a project in which students were invited to modify the openly licensed textbook being used in their psychology course. These student modifications diversified the content and helped create a resource more reflective of the context in which the students were taking the class.

OEP and Social Justice
Research continues to document the impact of OEP in addressing social justice issues. Cronin and McLaren found the incorporation of OEP can lead to increased awareness, use, and creation of open educational resources, alleviating high textbook costs which create barriers to education for some students. Student voices incorporated through OEP can diversify the content of the course, teaching, learning, and research materials. Nusbaum (2020) found that diversifying content through OEP contributes to an improved sense of belonging for subsequent students using the resource. Embracing OEP offer advantages regarding social justice, but it is important to think about social justice critically. For doing this the work of Lambert (2018), Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter and Bali et al. is enlightening. Lambert, for example, argues that technology driven initiatives can help only when there is awareness and willingness from societies, governments and individuals to make changes to address social injustices. Open education in online learning does not provide affordability to disadvantaged learners by default, this needs to be embedded with care and awareness. She introduces her own definition of OEP framed under a social justice perspective:"Open Education is the development of free digitally enabled learning materials and experiences primarily by and for the benefit and empowerment of non-privileged learners who may be under-represented in education systems or marginalised in their global context. Success of social justice aligned programs can be measured not by any particular technical feature or format, but instead by the extent to which they enact redistributive justice, recognitive justice and/or representational justice"This definition includes the idea of social injustice, which is taken from Fraser's work on abnormal justice. Fraser created a tripartite model of justice based on three pillars, redistribution, recognition and representation. These pillars are taken by Lambert and reinterpreted in the context of open education:


 * Redistributive justice – This dimension is related with economically inequalities. It involves the allocation of free educational resources or human resources to earners who otherwise cannot afford them. If possible additional free support for learners should be available
 * Recognitive justice – This dimension is concerned with cultural inequities and it involves respect and recognition for cultural and gender differences. There is a duty to recognise cultural, ethic, religious diversity when designing the curriculum, everybody should feel recognised in the curriculum. The implication of this principle would be to design educational material with learners and their needs in mind.
 * Representational justice – This dimension is related with political exclusion in education. It is based on principle of self-determination, where disadvantaged and marginalised groups should present their own stories themselves, rather than told by others. This involves equitable representation and political voice. This implies to design with representatives of the community if possible.

Additional Reading
Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J.L. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4).

Paskevicius, M., & Irvine, V. (2019). Open Education and Learning Design: Open Pedagogy in Praxis. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2019(1).

Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., Chaffee, R., Darrow, J., Guilmett, J., Harper, S., & Hilton, B. (2019). Student Perceptions of Open Pedagogy: An Exploratory Study. Open Praxis, 11(3), 275-288.

Scratchpad

 * student contributions can diversify the content (Nusbaum, 2020)
 * "transformational role" of collaboration taking place between instructors and students (Hodgkinson-Williams & Gray, 2019, p. 101)


 * artifacts can contribute to the community (Tietjen & Asino, 2021), an aspect of student work described in Knowledge Building theory as being of more value than their use as evaluation of student understanding


 * networked participation as learners working together in community to create knowledge (Cronin & McLaren, 2018; Tietjen & Asino, 2021; DeRosa & Robinson, 2017)


 * claims that research documenting impact of OEP impaired by broad definitions (Tietjen & Asino, 2021)
 * extension of teaching and learing practices (Cronin & McLaren, 2018)
 * social justice, increase access to materials for those unaffiliated with formal learning institutions (Tietjen & Asino, 2021)
 * social justice, diverse range of voices (Bali et al., 2020)
 * can lead to awareness, use, and creation of OER (Cronin & McLaren, 2018)
 * student contributions can diversify the content (Nusbaum, 2020)
 * Student diversified content improved sense of belonging for subsequent users (Nusbaum, 2020) Findings of the project indicated that the student diversified content contributed to an improved sense of belonging for subsequent students using the resource (Nusbaum, 2020).
 * cultivation of creativity (Tietjen & Asino, 2021; Karunanayaka & Naidu, 2017)

Levels of Openness[edit]
The trajectory to Open Education Practices lies between the use of open pedagogical models and, resource use and creation.:


 * Low - teachers believe they know what learners have to learn. A focus on knowledge transfer
 * Medium - Predetermined Objectives (closed environment) but, using open pedagogical models and encourage dialogue and Problem-based learning.
 * High - Learning Objectives and pathways highly governed by learners.

Experimenting with Headings
In this section I will experiment with headings. I will try heading 1. Then I will try heading 2. Finally, I will try heading 3. I am wondering if using these styles makes the page compatible with screen readers.

Heading 1
I am noticing that the menu actually calls them sub-headings. Also, that in the line following the heading or sub-heading the style automatically reverts to paragraph. I will use subsequent sub-headings to try other things in the edit tool bar.

Sub-heading 2
In this section I will experiment with other resources in the edit bar. First, I will highlight my text. I made the text bold using the edit bar. I reverted back from bold, however, using control-B, so maybe some other keyboard shortcuts will carry over as well.

Sub-heading 3
This is where, in APA style, I start wondering if I should make a new paragraph or if it stays on the same line. I will try linking in this section. Maybe I will talk about Edmon Low Library. The Wikiepedia article was suggested. I also saw how to link to an external site. That extra wandering period is bothering me, though.