The Future of Education

Open Educational Resources: the term coined for digital learning resources at UNESCO's 2002 Forum on Open Courseware, can offer an equitable education to many [1,2]. However, OERs have not been exploited to their full potential in many countries. This lack of uptake could be attributed to a lack of policy by education departments. Policy is critical if open education is to be realistically supported and promoted [3]. During 2020 and 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic forced the physical closure of schools all over the world many stakeholders in education, including teachers and private companies, supported emergency remote teaching and learning online through sharing their recommendations and opening access to their resources. In Ireland the digital repository Scoilnet compiled a list to highlight the Open access resources available and also requested that teachers make recommendations and upload such resources to the Scoilnet portal. In order to comply with European legislation passed in 2019, public sector organizations and private companies and organizations need to check the access ability of their websites, mobile apps, and media content. The publishing sector must also adhere to these common Accessibility standards ensuring that digital content can be used by all. High-quality digital materials need to be designed and developed and this requires professional time and resources we cannot expect this to happen without cost this short paper looks at examples where governments have successfully supported open education with a clear strategy [4, 5]. The paper also explores how Open Educational Resources could be promoted at the stage of initial teacher education.

Keywords: open educational resources, United Nations sustainability goals.

References:

1. Marcus-Quinn, A., & Hourigan, T. eds, (2021). Handbook for Online Learning Contexts: Digital, Mobile and Open: Policy and Practice. Springer, Cham.
2. Gueudet, G., Pepin, B., Courtney, S., Kock, Z. J., Misfeldt, M., & Tamborg, A. L. (2021). Digital platforms for mathematics teacher curriculum design: Affordances and constraints. In Mathematics Education in the Digital Age (pp. 84-98). Routledge.
3. Marcus-Quinn, A., & Hourigan, T. (2017). The potential of OERs for K-12 schools: why policy is crucial to success. In Handbook on digital learning for k-12 schools (pp. 455-464). Springer, Cham.
4. Hodgkinson-Williams, C., & Arinto, P. (2017). Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South (p. 610). African Minds.
5. Schuwer, R., Kreijns, K., & Vermeulen, M. (2014). Wikiwijs: An unexpected journey and the lessons learned towards OER. Open Praxis, 6(2), 91-102.