Open educational resources: shared solutions for higher education

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are a response to a need for more flexible licensing of educational materials. The OER Movement aims to create materials which can be exchanged and recombined for educational purposes. In the Higher Education sector, some universities (notably MIT) have led the way in putting their course material and lectures online. One of the effects of this has been a greater diversity in student access and recruitment[1]. However, there are many different approaches across the Higher Education sector, and most UK universities control access to some or all of their course content, licensing or selling the Intellectual Property to partner institutions.