Introduction

Well, for some reasons, I struggled in this assignment. I still don't like this intro, but I have to put up something.... So, this is what I have so far.

Isaku

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are one of the promising educational phenomena that could alter our current educational models and practices. For centuries, many educational institutions have practiced the closed or constrained system of education. Excluding a few exceptions, those organizations put intellectual, geographical, financial, and admission-related constraints on people if they desire to access their education.

OER could provide a way to remove these constraints, allowing any organizations or individuals to access, use, and reuse teaching and learning materials at no cost. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (n.d.) states “At the heart of the movement toward Open Educational Resources is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and re-use knowledge.”

Perhaps the most famous example of OER is the OpenCourseWare (OCW) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2002, MIT launched their OCW and started to share course syllabus, lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, recorded lectures, and other instructional materials over the Internet. By late 2007, MIT published over 1,800 courses from 33 academic fields, almost the entire curriculum of MIT.

Other universities followed the MIT’s OCW initiative, and the OER movement gained more attention; however none of these initiatives was intended to be a degree- or certificate-granting program. In contrast, a few scholars (Wiley, 2009, Smith & Casserly, 2006) and people argue that OER should be used as a part of programs that offers educational degrees and certifications. Currently, there are a few institutions that offer open and free educational program developed from OERs.

Although this open and cost-free aspect of the open educational program (OEP) might be initially appealing to some, the critical question still need to be answered to prove their creditability; how do they create and maintain an educational program that useful, meaningful, and creditable when financial and educational resources are limited? Good educational program requires much more than organizing courses and course materials. It requires experienced teachers or mentors that can monitor and assist the learning progress of the students, the trustworthy assessment system that can demonstrate competitive learning achievement of the students, and a strong administrative infrastructure that can support and maintain the institution and its growth. In order to prove the creditability of the program, any OEP needs to meet these requirements."