OER are:
- Freely accessible
- Reusable
- Editable
- Often use Creative Commons licences (www.creativecommons.org)

OER serves as a prompt to rethink the way resources are used in education.
Curriculum design is ideal context for this rethinking to begin.

An educational resource can be anything - videos, presentation slides, recorded lectures, textbooks.
They can come from a range of sources.
Open licences, such as Creative Commons, allow us to adapt and blend different resources. A CC licence describes the exact conditions of the re-use and distribution of the material. It means you don't have to request permission to do anything that is allowed in the licence.
Common conditions:
Share Alike - means you must attach a Share Alike CC licence to the material you've embedded the CC material in (like I've done with this presentation).
Non-commercial - must not be used/on-sold for profitable purposes.
No Derivatives - means you can't change any of the content - you must use it as it is, in its entirety.
See creativecommons.org/licenses for full information.

OER offers perpetuity of resources:
- ongoing access for students as they progress through their studies
- enables students to brush up on basic concepts covered in first-year units - not so easy to do once textbook sold.
OER helps develop skills for lifelong learning.

Also provides:
- ability to update as needed - for continuously up-to-date materials (much faster than textbook revision process).

Is content still king in 21st-century education?
- greater focus on learning as a process & students' role as active participants.

Is learning just about reading textbooks & attending/listening to lectures? What about the human interactions that happen outside of those activities?

Content no longer the be-all and end-all of quality education. There are more skills to be learned than how to consume content and regurgitate answers in essays or exams.

Want to know more about open education activity at La Trobe?
Open education working group (OEWG) discussion paper.
The open education conference held in March 2013 started it all.