The introduction of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the form of open courseware took place with the announcement of MIT in 2001 to put substantial number of courses on their website to be available to all for free. However, the term Open Educational Resource (OER) was coined in the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware (OCW) for Higher Education in Developing Countries organized by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2002 that accepted OER as “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” (UNESCO 2002). This definition promoted open sharing of the digital educational resources without much restriction on their use.

Keywords

open educational resources · OER · massive open online courses · MOOCs · digital learning resources · open courseware