OER Commons
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| Owner | ISKME |
|---|---|
| Website | oercommons |
| Launched | 2007 |
OER Commons is a freely accessible online library that allows teachers and others to search and discover open educational resources (OER) and other freely available instructional materials.
OER Commons, created by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, was developed to serve curriculum experts and educators in discovering open educational resources (OER) and collaborating around the use, evaluation, and improvement of those materials. Resources on the site can be searched and filtered using an expanded set of descriptive data, including conditions of use. Teachers, students, and others enrich this "metadata" when they tag, rate, and review materials, and share what works for them.
In 2007, with a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, OER Commons opened as a digital library and intermediary for openly licensed and freely available content. By aggregating resources and standardizing metadata from OER content providers, the site supports knowledge sharing and access to teaching and learning materials, strategies, and curricula online. Individual educators submit their own contributions which are curated. Materials are reviewed for quality and alignment to standards and shared primarily using Creative Commons licenses.
In a second phase, beginning in 2009, ISKME developed an initiative for teacher professional development program to support educators in finding and using OER supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation. As part of its teacher training program, ISKME trained educators from over 25 countries to use OER through workshops and summer academies, including ISKME's Teachers as Makers Academies.
ISKME’s OER research revealed how teachers’ exposure to OER, tools and professional development cultivates collaboration among teachers, as well as new conversations and reflection about teaching practices and roles. Petrides et al., 2011
Furthermore, research conducted on the impact of teachers’ participation in ISKME’s own OER training network revealed that engagement with OER reduced teacher isolation (Petrides & Jimes, 2010), as well as expanded the role of teachers in becoming more active innovators as they shared, collaborated and learned from one another (Petrides et al., 2011). This work also revealed the role that OER teacher champions play in sharing the benefits of OER with colleagues and supporting the knowledge sharing, collaboration, and use of OER in online OER communities (ISKME, 2008; Petrides & Jimes, 2010; Petrides et al., 2011).
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