Open Educational Resources (OER): Transforming the Learning Landscape in Digital Environment Amit Kumar Assistant Professor Department of Library and Information Science Mizoram University (A Central University) Email: amit85kr@gmail.com

Presentation Highlights… About OER OER Concept OER Include… OER Merits and Barriers OER: Indian Initiatives Recommendations

About OER OER concept came into existence in the late twentieth century with the development of e-learning, open source, free sharing, availability of digital content, changing need of the society and peer collaboration. The concept of OER has been developed with the aim to promote open access to digital educational resources or content available online for everyone at a global level.

OER Concept OER Free to All Digital Form Fair Use

OER include... Revise Reuse OER ‘4R’ Activities Remix Redistribute

Open Educational Resources (OER): Merits Offer Open and flexible learning opportunities Ensure the Increased efficiency and quality of learning resources Cost-efficiency of OER by avoiding duplication The innovative potential of OER - For individual users - For Teachers - For Educational Institutions - For governments and national agencies

OER Barriers Lack of institutional support Lack of technological tools Lack of skills and time Lack of quality Personal Issues like Workload

OER: Indian Initiatives National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) Learning Object Repository of the Consortium for Educational Communication eGyanKosh of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Online textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)

Recommendations There is still a gap between academicians and the information resources, major steps need to be taken to create maximum awareness among the academic fraternity and libraries and information professionals need to come forward to create awareness at mass level about the OERs available in their respective field; Libraries of the institute must and should conduct several training, orientation, workshops and awareness programmes for faculty and students frequently and the institutions must and should also take some of the major initiatives to encourage the OER use and their application in academic paradigm like institutional websites must and should create links to the various OER available, so that the visitors can have direct link to the OER; Academic community must and should be encouraged by the institutional authority to use OER and publish their research openly and colleagues also must and should share their expertise and skills with each other;

Contd… Higher Education institutions should recognize the important role of open educational resources within internal quality assurance process and further, these should consider creating flexible copyright policies and in addition to this, institutions should undertake institutional advocacy and capacity building with ensuring ICT access for staff and students; Academicians should also consider publishing OER and assemble, adapt and contextualize existing OER and further academicians should develop the habit of working in teams and try to seek institutional support for OER skills development and try to promote OER through publishing about OER and provide feedback about, and data on the use of, existing OER with continuous updating knowledge about IPR, copyright and privacy policies;

Contd… Various agencies working in the discipline at national and international level must and should take certain initiatives to popularize the OER and further these agencies should coordinate and work as a link among the Govt., institutions, and OER etc. Govt. should support the use of OER through their policy-making role in higher education and Govt. should also consider adopting open licensing frameworks and open standards; The organizations working in respective discipline must and should take initiatives at national level like NASSDOC, ICSSR, ICHR should take a lead to apprise social science scholars at national level to popularize and optimal use of OER to support their teaching, research and other academic activities.

Conclusion In short it can be concluded that OER movement has the enough potential to strengthen the education system provided to sort out the barriers make the policies and copyright issues flexible.