Basic Concept of OER

Basic Concept of OER by Professor Khondoker Mokaddem Hossain The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was first coined at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware and designated ‘teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no–cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions as OER’.

Basic Concept of OER
The UNESCO Forum also decided that the Open licensing will be built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work.

The concept OER therefore is related to digital self-contained unit of self-assessable teaching with an explicit measurable learning objective, having an open liquescence clearly attached and generally free-of-cost to reuse.

According to Johnstone (2005),
 * Different interpretations and perspectives of OER includes: ‘Learning resources - courseware, content modules, learning objects, learner-support and
 * assessment tools, online learning communities
 * Resources to support teachers - tools for teachers and support materials to enable them to create, adapt, and use OER, as well as training materials for teachers and other teaching tools
 * Resources to assure the quality of education and educational practices