Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Higher Education:
A Global Perspective

Tomohiro Nagashima
International Christian University, Japan
tomohiro.nagashima0529@gmail.com

Abstract: Based on the philanthropic philosophy, many open educational resources (OERs) have been developed in different parts of
the world over the past few years. MIT OpenCourseWare in the USA, OER Africa in African countries, Japan OpenCourseWare inJapan, and OpenLearn in the United Kingdom are just a few examples of OERs. These OERs vary by type of media used, level ofeducation, context of utilization, and so forth. This study aims to organize, compare, and contrast the growing phenomena of OER
development in order to help researchers and practitioners in education to conceptualize differences and similarities in the OER
movement. First, the cases of OERs development in Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Africa are identified, following this order.
Then, the analysis framework is to be developed using differences and similarities among the cases. Finally, the study will conclude
with a set of recommendations for future study areas.

Keywords: Open Educational Resources, OERs, Open Education, OER movement

Introduction
As the world has become connected, many initiatives of Open Educational Resources (OERs), defined 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 or re-purposing by others” (Atkins, Brown, & Hammond 2007), have gained
popularity among educators and learners. Despite their shared philanthropic philosophy, those initiatives are different
with each other in various aspects, and there are little research examining how they vary by presenting frameworks.

Major OER Initiatives
All of the selected OER initiatives below are on the recent paper by Commonwealth of Learning (McGreal,Kinuthia, & Marshall 2013), an established institution engaging in OERs.
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW): Recognized as the first major initiative of OERs started in 2001, MIT OCW has prov
ided almost all of MIT’s course materials on the web without any charges and registrations. With MIT OCW, people who do not have access to higher education can learn several disciplines with quality courses (Lerman, Miyagawa, & Margulies 2008). Since its philosophy of “sharing” attracted the entire world, a lot of other universities have launched their O
CW websites (Lerman, Miyagawa, & Margulies 2008).
Connexions: Developed at Rice University in the USA, Connexions not only offers free course materials, but also “aset of free software tools to help authors publish and collaborate” (Atkins, Brown, & Hammond 2007). Qualities ofvarious materials are ensured by its unique quality control system called “lenses” (Baraniuk 2008). Through “lenses”,
which differ in focuses of qualities and reviewers, users can select the best materials for their uses (Baraniuk 2008).
Coursera: As one of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) movements, Coursera serves as a platform fordelivering the free online courses from many higher educational institutions worldwide. Since it was started by two
Stanford professors and other established institutions have joined (Lewin 2012), Coursera, the representation of future
education enabled by the cutting-edge technology, receives attentions in the world today.
Japan OpenCourseWare (JOCW): Stimulated by MIT OCW, Japanese higher educational institutions launched
JOCW to promote open education movement in Japan. As of 2010, the number of course provided reached 1,497.
Among them, 1,285 courses are in Japanese and 212 courses are in English (Yamada 2013). Although it is managed byfamous universities of Japan, awareness level remains to be low (Yamada 2013).
OpenLearn: Serving as one of the European leading open education initiatives, UK’s OpenLearn was developed by U
K Open University in 2006. It lets individual learners and educators explore Open University’s quality courses withadequate technological supports (Fleming & Massey 2007).
OER Africa: This prominent movement in African countries focuses especially on the education in Africa, aiming topromote sustainable education through OERs, because OERs are perceived as having the potential to expand an accessto the education in Africa. It actively promotes educators in Africa to create their own resources since resources should
be suitable for African educational contexts, which are often dissimilar to those in developed countries (“IntroducingOER Africa” 2009).

Analysis Framework
The analysis framework below visualizes differences and similarities among the initiatives introduced.

MITOCW

Connexions

Materials

Degree ofinteractivityFunding(Name offoundations)

Languages
Translation

Scale

Otherfeatures

Videos,coursematerials used inface-to-faceclassesMaterials
areprovided
inmodules

Low

Hewlett,
Kabcenell,
Mellon,Rosenbaum…etc
Hewlett,
Maxfield…etc

EnglishChinese, Thai, Turkish,
Spanish,Portuguese,
Persian, and Korean
EnglishSpanish, Portuguese,Japanese, Chinese,
Vietnamese, and Thai

WorldwideFirst
initiative ofOERs

Worldwide

LensesHigh

CourseraVideos,
assignments,quizzes,
readings…etc

High

Business model
developed

English, Spanish, Chinese,and Italian
Russian, Portuguese,
Turkish, Japanese,
Ukrainian, Kazakh, andArabic(“CourseraPartnering” 2013)

Worldwide

MOOCs(registrationneeded)
Company

JOCW

Videos and course
materials used inface-to-faceclassesLow

No support fromfoundations

Japanese and English

Japanandothercountries

Not utilized
muchLow
awareness
level

Open
Learn

Varied(video,quiz,readings…etc)

High

Hewlett
Foundation

English

World
wide

Under
thetraditional
OpenUniversity

OER
AfricaReadings,
textbooks, sets ofmaterials…etc

Low

Hewlett
Foundation

EnglishAfricaFordeveloping
countries(Africa)

Recommendations for Future Study
In addition to the examples shown above, there exist more differences and diverse OER initiatives. As they vary,users are required to consider what to care about when they adopt the appropriate materials for the situations and thecontexts of uses. Since the main objective of OER movements is to reuse resources, there is a need for developing thereference information that users can refer to when choosing the OERs from numerous sorts of repositories.

References
Atkins, D. E., Brown, J. S., & Hammond, A. L. (2007). A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement:
Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities. Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Retrieved fromhttp://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/ReviewoftheOERMovement.pdf
Baraniuk, R. G. (2008). Challenges and Opportunities for the Open Education Movement: A Connexions Case Study. In Iiyoshi, T.
and Kumar, M. S. V. (Eds.), Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology,Open Content, and Open Knowledge. MA: MIT Press.
Coursera Partnering with Top Global Organizations Supporting Translation Around the World. (2013, May 14). Coursera Blog.
Retrieved from http://blog.coursera.org/post/50452652317/coursera-partnering-with-top-global-organizations
Fleming, C. & Massey, M. (2007). Jorum Open Educational Resources (OER). Retrieved from the Jorum:
http://www.jorum.ac.uk/squeezy/cms/docs/pdf/0707_JorumOERreportFinal.pdf
Introducing OER Africa. (2009). Retrieved from the OER Africa:
http://www.oerafrica.org/understandingoer/UnderstandingOER/ResourceDetails/tabid/1424/mctl/Details/id/37438/Default.aspx
Lerman, S. R., Miyagawa, S., & Margulies, A. H. (2008) OpenCourseWare: Building a Culture of Sharing. In Iiyoshi, T. andKumar, M. S. V. (Eds.), Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open
Content, and Open Knowledge. MA: MIT Press.
Lewin, T. (2012, July 17). Universities Reshaping Education on the Web. New York Times. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?pagewanted=
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McGreal, R., Kinuthia, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.) (2013). Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research, and Practice.
Commonwealth of Learning.
Yamada, T. (2013). Open Educational Resources in Japan. In Dhanarajan, G. and Porter, D. (Eds.), Open Educational Resources: An
Asian Perspective. Vancouver: Commonwealth of Learning and OER Asia.