Exemplary Collection of institutions with OER policy

<Open Educational Content


 *  Anadolu University, Yunusemre Lifelong Open Learning Portal 

Anadolu University, which was founded in 1958, established the Open Education Faculty in 1982. It is the only institution offering both on-campus and distance education. It has more than 1 million distance education students. Anadolu University supports life-long learning and it has been offering 149 courses having rich content free through Yunusemre education portal. The courses include the following components: Click http://yunusemre.anadolu.edu.tr for free registration without any prerequisites. (*Limitless *Without any Prerequisites *Free)
 * e-book,
 * e-course,
 * e-TV,
 * e-audio book
 * e-practice


 *  WA State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, Open Course Library 

The Open Course Library is a collection of expertly developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – for 81 high-enrollment college courses. 42 courses have been completed so far, providing faculty with a high-quality option that will cost students no more than $30 per course.

These course materials were created through an optional SBCTC grant, and the SBCTC Open Licensing Policy (pdf) requires that all materials created through optional grants carry an open license. Unless otherwise noted, the Open Course Library materials are owned by SBCTC and freely shared to the world with a Creative Commons Attribution-only license (CC-BY).

Our goals:
 * Lower textbook costs for students
 * Improve course completion rates
 * Provide new resources for faculty


 * Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment

http://belle.netera.ca/about.htm BELLE (Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment) http://belle.netera.ca/about.htm BELLE (Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment) is a $3.4 million shared-cost project funded under the CANARIE Learning Program. BELLE's objective is to develop a prototype educational object repository. It is a partnership led by Netera Alliance

The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom's only university dedicated to distance learning. Since its founding in 1969, The Open University has been a pioneer in making learning materials freely available through its successful partnership with the BBC. Many of our television and radio programmes are already supported by free internet activities and print materials. OpenLearn is the Open University's Open Content Initiative. The OpenLearn story started in 2005 with a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Website development began in May 2006 and the site was launched in October 2006. It offers a range of subject areas from access to postgraduate level. By April 2008, 5,400 learning hours of content will be available online.
 * OpenLearn Initiative - Open University UK

The OpenER project of the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) will test the use of OERs as a means of increasing participation in higher education. OpenER, through offering courses derived from existing distance learning courses and suitable for independent study, aims at letting learners get acquainted with higher education and helping them to gain experiences that boost their self-confidence and motivation to cross the threshold to formal higher education. OpenER is, thus, the ‘appetizer', the enticement for further learning at the higher educational level.
 * OpenER project - Open Universiteit Nederland

The tangible results of the OpenER project will be:

•	16 courses of 25 study hours each, suitable for self learning with high quality content on an entry academic level, based on the existing high quality OUNL material, launched in two batches in the fall of 2006 and early in 2007; •	a user friendly on-line delivery system; •	user friendly on-line facilities for self-testing and assessment: and •	a substantial amount of marketing and communication and resulting awareness with the Dutch population about OpenER.

At this moment (October 6), the project is on its way to deliver its first published courses in December. All 7 faculties have each been asked for 2 ECTS of course material. All courses will be offered under a Creative Commons license by-nd-sa.

MIT OCW is a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.
 * MIT OpenCourseWare - Massachusetts Institute of Technology


 * It is a publication of MIT course materials
 * Does not require any registration
 * Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
 * Does not provide access to MIT faculty

MIT OpenCourseWare can be considered a large-scale, web-based publication of MIT course materials. The project was announced in 2001. This project is jointly funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT." (Wikipedia) MIT will be continually evaluating the Access, Use, and Impact of MIT OCW. With 1,400 courses published as of May 1, 2006, this MIT initiative is still in a learning stage and will benefit enormously from the feedback they get. The initiative will include materials from 1800 courses by the year 2008.

Users from around the world have overwhelmingly endorsed the concept of open sharing of educational materials and information as it is exemplified in the MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) web site. Since it opened to the public on September 30, 2002, users from more than 215 countries, territories, and city-states around the world have visited MIT OCW.

Athabasca University (AU) is Canada's leading distance-education and online university: Canada's Open University. AU currently serves about 32,000 students per year, following a period of rapid growth which has seen student numbers double over a six-year period. Some 260,000 students have registered in AU's individualized courses and programs since the University was created by the Government of Alberta in 1970. Athabasca University makes it possible for you to earn a university education regardless of where you live or work, or your commitments to careers or families. The University strives to remove the barriers of time, space, past educational experience, and, to a great degree, level of income.
 * Athabasca University - Open University in Canada

Time: Individualized study courses allow you to learn at your own pace. Flexible instruction frees you from the demands of specified class times and rigid institutional schedules. For undergraduate individualized study courses, there are no admissions deadlines; students may enrol year-round. Space: The University can be wherever you are, through individualized-study packages (student manual, study guide, textbook(s), and if appropriate CD-ROM, audiocassettes and videotapes) and the Internet. Past educational experience: Any person, 16 years of age or older, is eligible for admission to the University. Level of income: AU's method of learning allows you to pursue part-time studies and a full-time career. No longer does a university education necessarily mean the loss of employment income.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.
 * OpenCourseWare Consortium

For more information on Consortium activities or participation requirements, please contact:

Stephen Carson, MIT OpenCourseWare, at 1-617-253-1250 or feedback@ocwconsortium.org.

JOCW is the consortium of Japanese Universities which have been providing OCW in JAPAN. will do our effort to encourage interchanging among not only Japanese's organizations related to the OCW, but also foreign organizations by participating the OCW Consortium as an Affiliate member.
 * Japanes OpenCourseWare Alliance (JOCW)

An international partnership has started work on a project to build a large-scale public infrastructure for research information across Europe. DRIVER project responds to the vision that any form of scientific-content resource, including scientific/technical reports, research articles, experimental or observational data, rich media and other digital objects should be freely accessible through simple Internet-based infrastructures. Like GEANT2, the successful European network for computing resources, data storage and transport, the new DRIVER repository infrastructure will enable researchers to plug into the new knowledge base and use scientific content in a standardised, open way. The project is funded by the European Commission under the auspices of the "Research Infrastructure" unit. DRIVER will be helping countries to create networks of openly-accessible repositories for research information.
 * "Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research"? (DRIVER)

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is an attempt to build a "low-barrier interoperability framework" for digital archives (aka "institutional repositories") containing digital content (aka "digital libraries"). It allows people (Service Providers) to harvest metadata (from Data Providers). This metadata is used to provide "value-added services", often by combining different data sets. / Wikipedia
 * Open Archive Initiative

The OAI Executive Committee manages the operational details of the Initiative under the oversight of the Steering Committee and with the support of the Technical Committee. The Executive Committe is:


 * Carl Lagoze (lagoze@cs.cornell.edu)
 * Herbert Van de Sompel (herbertv@lanl.gov)

Carnegie Mellon is a global research university of more than 10,000 students and more than 4,000 faculty and staff.
 * Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI)

Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a collection of "cognitively informed," openly available and free online courses and course materials that enact instruction for an entire course in an online format. Ideally, the courses developed and delivered through the OLI project will be used by instructors and students in Colleges and Universities throughout the world as well as individuals seeking education who are not affiliated with an institution. OLI should have a profound impact on higher education by increasing access to education, enhancing the quality of instruction and providing a model for a new generation of online courses and course materials that teach more effectively and appeal to students more powerfully than anything in existence today. Contacts: Administration Joel Smith (Principal Investigator) Candace Thille (Director)

European Schoolnet (EUN) is a unique not-for-profit consortium of 28 ministries of education in Europe created in 1997. EUN provides major European education portals for teaching, learning and collaboration and leads the way in bringing about change in schooling through the use of new technology.
 * European Schoolnet (EUN

European Schoolnet is at the crossroads of national and regional education networks, building synergies between communities of teachers, learners, developers, researchers and policy-makers.

EUN’s work is organised in three strands corresponding to its core objective of supporting the efficient use of ICT in education and the European dimension in education: School networking and practice; knowledge building and exchange on ICT and practice and Interoperability and content exchange.

The European Schoolnet (EUN) team in Brussels is made up of people from all over Europe and beyond. More than 30 staff members and trainees are focused on five areas of activity:


 * 1) Management of EUN portals and schools collaboration activities
 * 2) Open architecture planning and technical development for schools networks
 * 3) Promotion of innovation
 * 4) Marketing and communication
 * 5) Administration and management


 * Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL)

The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in Reusable Learning Objects builds on a strong base in the partner institutions: London Metropolitan University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Nottingham.

CETL tries to achieve the widespread use and reuse of high quality learning objects. The strategy of the CETL is to tackle different issues in a series of phases. Each phase results in a new set of learning objects, evaluated with substantial groups of students, which are available for immediate reuse. There are four such cycles in the first two years of the CETL (2005-2007) producing new learning objects in Mathematics, Nursing, Language Learning, Business Studies and Study Skills. Each phase, however, will also move forward the conceptual knowledge, tools and techniques required to create a new generation of “generative learning objects”. Generative learning objects enable tutors to easily adapt learning objects to suit their particular needs. These ‘second generation’ learning objects represent a major goal for the CETL in advancing knowledge and practice in this field.

A selection of learning objects that have been developed by partners can be accessed under / Showcase of Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs).


 * ParisTech

The eleven ParisTech* engineering institutions launched an ambitious project in November 2003, aiming at making available some of their educational resources (lecture notes, exercises, yearly archives, simulations, animations, course notes and videos). One target of this project is to promote the excellent high ­quality teaching provided by those institutions, in order to attract foreign students. Another goal of the project is to contribute to bridge the digital divide by making available Open Access Educational Resources, in accordance with the recommendations of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This initiative appears in the WSIS stocktaking database. This project is based on three principles:


 * Contributing to world­wide knowledge sharing;
 * Promoting pedagogical efforts from the staff from the eleven ParisTech institutions;
 * Fostering dynamics concerning the use of new information and communication technologies combined with teaching and educational innovations within those institutions.

The site (already accessible through http://paristech.org ), which is scheduled to open officially in January 2006, already includes over 800 educational resources from around 100 teaching units. These figures should double in a year from now.

Contents are, for the time being, available in French, translations in English and Spanish are scheduled.


 * Commonwealth of Learning (COL)

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL), headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training. Two online databases of learning content that provides support to Commonwealth countries free of charge. Institutions or governments can use these repositories to access a range of free learning content.


 * Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digital Repositories

JISC is committed to enabling the UK education and research communities to engage in national and global collaborations. JISC’s five strategic aims reflect and support both government objectives and the needs of the education and research communities, to:


 * develop solutions that help enable the UK education and research communities to keep their activities world-class through the innovative use of ICT
 * provide advice to institutions to enable them to make economic, efficient and legally compliant use of ICT, respecting the individual’s and corporate rights and responsibilities
 * help the sector provide positive, personalised user learning experiences and aid student progression
 * develop mutually advantageous partnerships with organisations in the UK and abroad
 * advise, inform and help implement the strategies of government, funding councils and research councils.


 * Budapest Open Access Initiative

The Budapest Open Access Initiative arises from a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet. Finally, they explored how OSI and other foundations could use their resources most productively to aid the transition to open access and to make open-access publishing economically self-sustaining. The result is the Budapest Open Access Initiative. It is at once a statement of principle, a statement of strategy, and a statement of commitment.


 * Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider. The Berlin Declaration states that, "Establishing open access as a worthwhile procedure ideally requires the active commitment of each and every individual producer of scientific knowledge and holder of cultural heritage".

In signing the "Berlin Declaration", the research organizations advocate consistently using the Internet for scientific communication and publishing. Their recommendations in favor of open access are directed not only at research institutions but also and to the same extent at cultural institutes such as libraries, archives, and museums.


 * Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing

The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing contains statements of principle that were drafted during a one-day meeting held on April 11, 2003 at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The purpose of this document is to stimulate discussion within the biomedical research community on how to proceed, as rapidly as possible, to the widely held goal of providing open access to the primary scientific literature.

Professional Training

 * Open Training Unesco


 * UNITRACC (Underground Infrastructure Training and Competence Center) / Germany

Web: www.stein.de / Email: Julia.Geessink@stein.de

UNITRACC is a product of the Knowledge Factory GmbH, Germany. UNITRACC can be used as a basis and guideline for the solution of the various theoretical and practical problems. Furthermore UNITRACC is also a business solution for certified engineers and technicians who work in pipeline construction and maintenance. UNITRACC supports and assists trainees, students, participants of educational courses and qualification procedures during advanced training and further education, as well as teachers and instructors in educational institutions, colleges and universities. Town councils, local authorities and private companies who have and operate public supply and disposal networks are hereby addressed.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
 * Overview
 * Introduction: PLAN the use of OER
 * Tutorial: SEARCH & FIND OER
 * Tutorial: PRODUCE & REMIX OER: author and modify
 * Tutorial: SHARE OER: publish and re-use
 * Tutorial: CHOOSE a license
 * Tutorial: USE open source tools
 * ORGANIZE: Collections
 * Exemplary Collection of Open eLearning Content Repositories
 * Exemplary Collection of institutions with OER policy
 * Exemplary Collection of open content licensing approaches
 * Exemplary Collection of open formats, educational standard and tools for producing open educational content