Open Education Resource (OER) Commons

Lead Author: Cutler J. Cleveland (other articles)
Article Topics: Environmental information and communication and Organization
This article has been reviewed and approved by the following Topic Editor: Ida Kubiszewski (other articles)
Last Updated: February 27, 2008

OER Commons is an open learning network where teachers and professors (from pre-K to graduate school) can access their colleagues’ course materials, share their own, and collaborate on affecting today’s classrooms. It uses Web 2.0 features (tags, ratings, comments, reviews, and social networking) to create an online experience that engages educators in sharing their best teaching and learning practices. The mission of OER Commons is to expand educational opportunities by increasing access to high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER), and facilitating the creation, use, and re-use of OER, for instructors, students, and self-learners.

Open Education Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.

OER Commons reaches its mission through the following objectives:
  • Use: To provide a single point of access through which educators, students, and all learners can search, browse, evaluate, download, and discuss open educational resources (OER) that are freely available online.
  • Re-Use: To expand opportunities for those who use open educational resources to develop and submit high-quality content for others to use and localize.
  • Community: To broaden opportunities for educators, students, and self-learners
    to exchange information about, create standards for, and otherwise define,
    improve and evaluate the quality of open educational resources available on
    the Internet.

Further reading

Citation
Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Ida Kubiszewski (Topic Editor). 2008. "Open Education Resource (OER) Commons." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth May 4, 2007; Last revised February 27, 2008; Retrieved July 4, 2008]. <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Open_Education_Resource_(OER)_Commons>
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