Educators have been sharing open educational resources (OERs) for over 12 years now. There are literally tens of thousands of them out there, many structured as collections of course materials known as open courseware (OCW), some structured as complete open courses, some structured as complete open textbooks, and many not really structured at all. The “sharing ball” is rolling. There are more materials that need to be shared, but the eventual sharing of these materials has now become inevitable.
What is anything but inevitable is the adoption of any of these open educational resources. As a thought experiment, pick your favorite institution you believe is committed to open education. Have they ever adopted an open education resource produced at another institution for in-class use? If they have an open courseware collection, can you find a single third-party OER in the collection? If even the institutions that claim to be committed to open educational resources aren’t reusing them, who will?
Read more at OpenSource.com
