Open education has many definitions. Broadly speaking, the term refers to education that can be accessed without any barriers related to previous qualifications, time, place, and learning strategies. In short, it is an accessible route to acquiring education.

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The central aim of open education is to make education accessible to all. The origins of the open education movement can be traced back to the founding of institutions like UNISA in South Africa in 1946. UNISA pioneered a distance education model, aiming to broaden access to education for individuals unable to participate in traditional educational settings. This model was expanded with the foundation of The Open University in the UK, in 1969, which aimed to provide tertiary education to a wide range of learners by adopting an open entry policy and offering learning at a distance (Weller, 2020). As time has progressed and technologies have advanced, the concept of open education has evolved, taking on a broader approach that extends beyond institutionalised education and focuses on educational resources and courses that are free to access. This expansion includes open content such as open educational resources (OER), open educational practices (OEP) that create and share that content, and open courses such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and badged open courses (BOCs).