The open educational resources initiative has been underway for over a decade now and higher education institutions are slowly adopting open educational resources (OER). The use and creation of OER are important aspects of adoption and both are needed for the benefits of OER to be fully realized. More...

The high cost of textbooks is of concern not only to college students but also to society as a whole. Open textbooks promise the same educational benefits as traditional textbooks; however, their efficacy remains largely untested. More...

This article analyzes a system of virtual attendance, called “AVIP” (AudioVisual over Internet Protocol), at the Spanish Open University (UNED) in Spain. UNED, the largest open university in Europe, is the pioneer in distance education in Spain. It currently has more than 300,000 students, 1,300 teachers, and 6,000 tutors all over the world, besides Spain. More...

Despite the recent increases of interest in open education, notably in massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Fini, 2009), it has been continuously asserted that this form of social knowledge production lacks a philosophical or theoretical foundation (Vandenberg, 1975). More...

Table of Contents

Editorial

Research Articles

Field Notes

Book Notes

Book review: Student participation in online discussions Barbara Miller Hall

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Full Issue

IRRODL Volume 14, Number 3

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In its first decade (2001-2010) the OER movement has been carried by numerous relevant and successful projects around the globe. These were sometimes large-scale but more often not, and they were primarily initiated by innovating educational institutions and explorative individual experts. More...

Foundations like Hewlett, Mellon, and Gates provided start-up funding and support that nurtured the field of open educational resources (OER) from infancy to a robust early adolescence characterized by energy and idealism (Casserly & Smith, 2008). More...

As the world becomes more digitized, there will be an increasing need to make available learning resources in electronic format for access by information and communication technologies. The question education will face is whether these learning resources will be available for learners to access at no cost or affordable cost so that there will be equity in access by anyone regardless of location, status, or background. More...

Since the birth of the World Wide Web, educators have been exchanging ideas and sharing resources online. They are all aware of the turmoil in higher education created by freely available content, including some hopeful developments charted in this issue. More...

Open educational resources (OER) can be described in numerous ways (Creative Commons, 2012). In this visualization based context, however, OER can be 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. 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. (Hewlett Foundation, 2007)

This definition emphasizes some of the aspects highlighted in this article, namely that an OER approach has also been taken to capture and visualize OER materials. More...