Some selected Open Educational Resources and reading materials: every learner must know

 

Open Access makes a variety of resources available to students, educators, authors, readers, and even entire communities. ICTs are transforming our society at a rapid pace. It is incredibly simple for a person to communicate with others. Open Access literature, in particular, refers to academic production that is freely available online; it has quick access, and re-use rights. Open Educational Resources (OER) include scholarly articles, conference proceedings, monographs, and other learning materials (Videos, Audios, and Codes etc.).

The purpose of this article is to show some important OER platforms. Some platforms are based on their parent institutions and some platforms are standalone.

#1 eGyanKosh

IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University) has made a substantial contribution to the HE system. It is successfully administrating Open Distance Learning (ODL) for the advancement of higher education in India for more than two decades. It launched eGyanKosh for learning resources. By registering in their particular web portal, learners can now readily access and download study resources at no cost. The collection includes both paper and video-based materials.

#2 ePGPathshala

The Ministry of Human Resource Development Education's ePGPathshala project focuses on e-contents for postgraduate students. It covers about 70 subjects in the social sciences, arts, visual arts, and humanities, scientific and mathematical sciences, and linguistics and languages. It provides Text and Video materials.

#3 OER commons

OER Commons, ISKME's digital public library and collaboration platform, was launched in 2007. It aims to enhance open educational resources to all levels. It offers high-quality OER collaborated by experts.

#4 NIOS

The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) is an autonomous organisation, established under the National Policy on Education 1986 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. NIOS provides courses on Vocational aspects; Secondary and Senior Secondary education, and Elementary Education. NIOS implemented the Open Educational Resources (OER) for respective courses.

#5 SWAYAM

SWAYAM is a programme initiated by the Government of India and designed to achieve the three cardinal principles of Education Policy viz., access, equity and quality. It aims to provide the best teaching-learning resources to all. It is basically a MOOC platform but users can access materials and earn certificates for completion.

#6 NPTEL

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is a project of MHRD initiated by seven IITs (Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Guwahati and Roorkee), and IISc, Bangalore in 2003. It is the largest online repository of courses in engineering, basic sciences, and selected humanities and social sciences.

These six platforms can meet learners' demands. There are many platforms available in the world which can be found in the wiki sources. For further reading, learners can go through the following research works on OER.

• Hylén, J. (2021). Open educational resources: Opportunities and challenges. [Click]

• Downes, S. (2007). Models for sustainable open educational resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, 3(1), 29-44. [Click]

• Ehlers, U. D. (2011). Extending the territory: From open educational resources to open educational practices. Journal of open, flexible and distance learning, 15(2), 1-10. [Click]

• Caswell, T., Henson, S., Jensen, M., & Wiley, D. (2008). Open educational resources: Enabling universal education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 9(1), 1-11. [Click]

• Johnstone, S. M. (2005). Open educational resources serve the world. Educause Quarterly, 28(3), 15. [Click]

• Das, P., Mazumder, S., & Sarkar, S. (2018). Impact of Open Access Educational Resources in Library and Information Science Domain: A Study. [Click]

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