Open Education

Quoted in Chapter 6 of the open access book Distributing Knowledge: Openness, Equity, and Higher Educational Transformation: 

Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness. By combining the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology, Open Education wants to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources, while harnessing today’s collaborative spirit to develop educational approaches that are more responsive to learners’ needs. Open Education seeks to scale up educational opportunities by taking advantage of the power of the internet, allowing rapid and essentially free dissemination, and enabling people around the world to access knowledge, connect and collaborate. Open allows not just access, but the freedom to modify and use materials, information and networks so education can be personalized to individual users or woven together in new ways for diverse audiences, large and small...

The chapter quotes Rory McGreal's articulation of the underlying concept:

‘publicly-funded research and educational content belongs to the people and should therefore be open and accessible to them’. He links this to being able to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4: ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’

The chapter also quotes from a collective voice of more than 50 academics who remind us that openness in education is more than just reducing barriers to access: 

[…] the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity (Abstract).

Open Educational Resources (OER)

David Wiley identified the 5 R's of openness:

Retain—the right to make, own, and control copies of the content.
Reuse—the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video).
Revise—the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language).
Remix—the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup).
Redistribute—the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend).

UNESCO developed a set of recommendations on OER, which are useful in reminding us of their scope and the need for a licencing system:

1. Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

2. Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.

3. Information and communications technology (ICT) provide great potential for effective, equitable and inclusive access to OER and their use, adaptation and redistribution. They can open possibilities for OER to be accessible anytime and anywhere for everyone, including individuals with disabilities and individuals coming from marginalized or disadvantaged groups. They can help meet the needs of individual learners and effectively promote gender equality and incentivize innovative pedagogical, didactical and methodological approaches.

4. Stakeholders in the formal, non-formal and informal sectors (where appropriate) in this Recommendation include: teachers, educators, learners, governmental bodies, parents, educational providers and institutions, education support personnel, teacher trainers, educational policy makers, cultural institutions (such as libraries, archives and museums) and their users, information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure providers, researchers, research institutions, civil society organizations (including professional and student associations), publishers, the public and private sectors, intergovernmental organizations, copyright holders and authors, media and broadcasting groups and funding bodies.

OER range from individual resources through to whole courses with assessments and whole texbooks. Open textbooks have been shown to reduce costs for students considerably. There are a number of repositories through which you can access various OER - here is an extensive list of where you can find OER, but there are plenty of others.

The Creative Commons licencing system was developed to allow works under copyright to be used free of charge. They offer everyone a standardised way to grant permission for the use of their work. They provide permission for the use of resources according to various criteria. There are 6 licences, and a public domain dedication tool, varying in permissiveness from most to least permissive, and identify what a user can do with the work. You will see these components of a licence: 
• CC: Creative Commons
• BY: credit must be given to the creator.
• SA: adaptations must be shared under the same terms.
• NC: only non-commercial uses of the work are permitted.
• ND: no derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.

CC BY: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. This book is published under this most permissive licence, and is an appropriate licence for OER.
CC BY-SA: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. This is also an appropriate licence for OER, although it does impose some limitations on reuse.
CC BY-NC: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. This licence is also an appropriate licence for OER, although it limits commercial use—which in
any case would be against the spirit of openness.
CC BY-NC-SA: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. This licence is also suitable for OER, although it does impose some limitations on reuse.
CC BY-ND: This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. This licence should be avoided where possible for OER as it limits adaptation.
CC BY-NC-ND: This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. This licence should be avoided where possible for OER as it limits reuse and adaptation.