Kenya national symposium on open education/About Open Education

What is Open Education?

Open Education is an umbrella concept which incorporates emerging international practices in the formal education sector associated with Open Educational Resources, OpenCourseWare, Open Content, Open Educational Practices, Open Access, Open Licensing, Open Policy, Open Source, and Open Business Models.

What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone (Downes 2011.) Read more ...

What are Open Educational Practices (OEP)?

Open Educational Practices (OEP) are policies and practices which support and promote the creation, use and reuse of high quality OER.

What is Open Access?

Open access is a global movement which aims to provide unrestricted access to scholarly research outputs including peer-reviewed journals, theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters (Suber, P. 2004.)

What is open licensing?

Open licensing refers to the suite of the legal tools used to grant open permissions to reuse, revise, remix and redistribute OER with Creative Commons licenses being the preferred international licensing standard. Read more ...

What is open policy?

Open policy promotes unrestricted access and open licensing of resources financed through public and philanthropic funding in order to maximize the impact of the investment. Read more ...

What is the Commonwealth of Learning?

The Commonwealth of Learning 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. COL is the first international agency to adopt an open licensing policy and OER is a strategic priority in COL's current three year plan.