In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology launched the Open Education Initiative. This initiative is designed to increase the availability of high-quality, up-to-date educational materials available to teachers in order to provide the best quality learning experiences for students, regardless of their location. The Office of Educational Technology encourages educators to use openly licensed resources and works with major companies to provide quality resources, an easy-to-use framework and research case studies.
Open Educational Resources (OER) refer to educational materials that are freely accessible and in the public domain. OERs allow teachers to curate, adapt and create high-quality, openly licensed educational resources without breaking any copyright laws. OERs must be digitized, free and editable. Lists of available OERs include resources like online courses, digital textbooks, images, videos and assessment items. Utilizing these resources not only helps with increasing equity but also assists in finding and assuring that content is relevant and high quality. Traditional textbooks are perpetually outdated, forcing districts to re-invest significant portions of their budgets to replace them. Curating OERs allows educators to maintain the quality and relevance of their materials through continuous updates.
Having openly licensed educational materials enables schools to re-purpose funding spent on static textbooks for other pressing needs, such as investing in the transition to digital learning. In some districts, replacing just one textbook has made tens of thousands of dollars available for other purposes. Not purchasing these types of materials allows money to be directed to teachers who develop or curate OERs.
Yet another benefit is the empowerment of educators. OERs empower educators as creative professionals by giving them the ability to adapt and customize learning materials to meet the needs of their students without breaking copyright laws. Giving educators the ability to develop or choose materials to fit the needs of their environment is beneficial to everyone in the education world.