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ABOUT OER
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Are OER the same as open learning/open education?

Although use of OER can support open learning/open education, the two are not the same. Making 'open education' or 'open learning' a priority has significantly bigger implications than only committing to releasing resources as open or using OER in educational programmes. It requires systematic analysis of assessment and accreditation systems, student support, curriculum frameworks, mechanisms to recognize prior learning, and so on, in order to determine the extent to which they enhance or impede openness.

Open learning is an approach to education that seeks to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning, while aiming to provide students with a reasonable chance of success in an education and training system centred on their specific needs and located in multiple arenas of learning. It incorporates several key principles:
  • Learning opportunity should be lifelong and should encompass both education and training;
  • The learning process should centre on the learners, build on their experience and encourage independent and critical thinking;
  • Learning provision should be flexible so that learners can increasingly choose, where, when, what and how they learn, as well as the pace at which they will learn;
  • Prior learning, prior experience and demonstrated competencies should be recognized so that learners are not unnecessarily barred from educational opportunities by lack of appropriate qualifications;
  • Learners should be able to accumulate credits from different learning contexts;
  • Providers should create the conditions for a fair chance of learner success1.
As this list illustrates, while effective use of OER might give practical expression to some of these principles, the two terms are distinct in both scope and meaning.

1 Saide (South African Institute for Distance Education) (1996) The Green Paper on Higher Education: An open learning perspective. Unpublished paper, Saide, Johannesburg
Taken from A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER)


MORE INFORMATION ON OER
RECENT NOTES

Why OER? Why OA? UNESCO publishes two new brochures
April 16, 2026
UNESCO has published two new brochures authored by Dr. Tel Amiel, UNESCO Chair in Open Education and Technologies for the Common Good, Universidade de Brasília. Why OER: Open Educational Resources outlines the uses and benefits of open educational resources in promoting access to quality education for all. It makes the distinction between "open" and "free", and addresses common worries and misconceptions academics might have when opening up their work as OER, including citation, control, the effort required, potential uses as training material for AI, and institutional policy. Why OA: Open Access focuses on research outputs, promoting the fair and ethical sharing of scientific knowledge as a global public resource. It compares models for open access publishing, recommending Diamond Open Access, and addresses common concerns such as the perception of quality for open access works, its potential use in training AI, and the differences between sharing research through social media and publishing it through an open license. Both brochures are available from UNESCO. ...

AEGIS-OA launches to advance sustainable Diamond Open Access publishing in Europe
March 30, 2026
AEGIS-OA (Activate European Guidance and Incentives for Sustainable Open Access publishing) launched 19-20 March 2026 as a consortium of research organisations, service providers, and National Capacity Centres aiming "to strengthen a transparent, sustainable, and high-quality open access scholarly publishing ecosystem in Europe." Its goal is to build upon the services of the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH), enhancing its discovery tools and service infrastructures, as well as broadening the scope of Diamond Open Access to include monographs and edited volumes. For more information, review their press release below or visit the European Diamond Capacity Hub . ...

Who Owns AI-Generated Content?
March 23, 2026
As a contribution to the "Sharing is a Challenge" series for OEWeek 2026 from the Unitwin Network on Open Education, the web article, Who Owns AI-Generated Content? by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/ICDE Chair in Open Educational Resources, addresses two "paralyzing concerns" regarding the use of AI-generated learning materials: the paralysis of legal uncertainty, and the crisis of trust in shared content. "This article confronts these intertwined problems directly. We move beyond generic advice to address the specific apprehensions that hinder creators. Our goal is to demystify the legal landscape, provide current information on using shared material, and rebuild the confidence needed to engage with the digital commons—not recklessly, but with informed and empowered knowledge. "Presently, a clear legal trend is emerging that strongly supports openness in education. The evolving copyright landscape for GenAI, characterized by the denial of protection for purely AI-generated works, aligns with fair use/dealing doctrines and statutory exceptions for education. This creates a novel and powerful foundation for a new class of fully accessible Open Educational Resources (OER), democratizing content creation and freeing it from traditional copyright restrictions." ...

Killed, Not Starved: Deliberate Neglect of the OERF a Failure of Institutional Duty to Open Education
January 10, 2026
In December 2025, Te Pūkenga (New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology), the sole shareholder of the Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF), made the decision to disestablish the non-profit and end its services. The roles of the New Zealand UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources and the Open Source Technologist supporting Open Education at Otago Polytechnic were terminated. Wayne Mackintosh describes in a detailed blog post how poor stewardship and neglect forced the self-funding OERF, responsible for several successful and award-winning initiatives including WikiEducator and the OERu, into technical insolvency. "The actions taken by the shareholder resulted in the Foundation no longer being able to continue operating as a self-funded entity, notwithstanding that it had done so for 14 years." As a result, its services, including the open online courses hosted by the OERF, are expected to wind down by mid-2026, breaking long-standing commitments to the UNESCO OER Recommendation. In a related post, Paul Bacsich provides a conversation with ChatGPT about the factors leading to the closure of the OERF ...

Diamond Dreams, Unequal Realities: The Promise and Pitfalls of No-APC Open Access
October 23, 2025
Maryam Sayab, Director of Communications at the Asian Council of Science Editors (ACSE), has written a blog post on the promises and pitfalls of publishing as a Diamond OA journal, launching a critical conversation for Open Access Week. She argues that: "... the scholarly community risks embracing a 'utopian ideal' of free publishing without grappling with the structural realities that make it viable.... The result is a paradox: in regions where the promise of diamond OA is most urgently needed to break down paywalls and amplify underrepresented scholarship, the conditions for sustaining it are least available." She asks, "... not how many journals are diamond, but how many can endure, and what we, as a global community, are willing to do to ensure they do." Sayab's full blog post and accompanying discussion are available here . International Open Access Week, Who Owns Our Knowledge, runs from October 20 to 26, 2025. ...