Open Educational Resources (OER) constitute an important resource with the potential to facilitate the expansion of quality education. The relevance of OER is augmented by the exponential growth in online accessibility afforded by the wide range of new mobile devices. Athabasca University has been supporting a transition to course delivery via mobile devices for the past ten years, optimising websites for use on different devices. Driven by the copyright owners desire to apply technological protection measures (TPM), the need for OER is becoming more apparent. The disabling of specific functions such as copying and highlighting, and the prohibitions on format shifting and other changes, make it very difficult or impossible to use the content in educational contexts. This is reinforced by restrictive legislation prohibiting many educational uses such as reusing, mixing or repurposing the content. As mobile devices evolve, the content needs to be open so that it can be freely used without the restrictions imposed on proprietary content.

Keywords

Creative Commons · DRM · legislation · mobile learning · repurposing OER