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An introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER)
An introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER)

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Conclusion

We hope you’ve enjoyed studying this short course. If you’ve worked through the first activity, you’ll have a sense of the underlying ethos of OER and the principles set out in the Paris Declaration. That dates from 2012, of course – a long time ago in the fast-moving world of technology-enhanced learning. But the principles continue to inspire and generate exciting work and research. And in Technology-enhanced learning: practices and debates (H800) [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , from which this material is extracted, we encourage students to explore the latest developments in digital education and learning.

You may have already been familiar with the OER sites in Activity 2. If so, you may have decided to look further afield. But if you weren’t familiar with those resources from MIT, Carnegie Mellon and The Open University, that activity will have given you ideas about what’s available.

And finally, with Activity 3, you had the chance to redesign some material for your own learners. And if you skipped it because you don’t have any learners? You can always go back and spend a few minutes thinking about how you would adapt some OER material for friends or people in your family.

All in all, we hope this sample material has whetted your appetite to continue exploring OER, and to further your interest in the rich field of technology-enhanced learning. For example, you could study a much larger block of free material, where you can explore several facets of ‘openness’ – including MOOCs, other aspects of OER, and ‘rhizomatic learning’. That block is adapted from the Open University course H817 Openness and innovation in elearning , which is a companion course to H800 within The Open University’s Masters in Online and Distance Education .