Earlier this month, educators, technologists, and learners across the world celebrated Open Education Week, a global event that seeks to reduce barriers, increase access, and drive improvements in education through open sharing and digital formats. 

Organized by the Open Education Consortium, the event showcases open projects, resources, and ideas and encourages the further creation and dissemination of educational resources. While OEW may have passed, advocates can continue to celebrate and advance open education all year long. Here’s the why and how:

What is open education?

The open education movement started in response to two critical issues facing educators and students. Most are aware of the rising costs of learning materials; a study published by U.S. Department of Labor found that the cost of textbooks increased by 88% from 2006–2016. Eliminating these costs can significantly reduce financial barriers for our most disadvantaged students.

Furthermore, open resources have the additional advantage of being published under a Creative Commons license. This means teachers can take portions of open texts or digital materials, add their own material or include them within a lesson, and share with other teachers. One example of this is the Mixxer Language Exchange site hosted by Dickinson College, which connects language learners with native speakers as part of a mutual language exchange. Users can practice via Skype or submit a short writing piece and ask for corrections. The site also provides “lessons” that integrate materials from the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) to support and guide exchanges.

Next steps

We believe that education should be open and free, and there are several resources to help teachers interested in collaborative learning. Those just getting started may want to check out  MERLOT, an open educational resource project from the California State University. Anyone can contribute or use materials from the repository, which includes whole courses, open textbooks, small instructional modules, and more. Those looking for open textbooks should browse California’s Cool4Ed library, Minnesota’s Open Textbook Library, OpenStax from Rice University, and aggregators of these resources, such as OER Commons’ hub.

Finally, institutions and governments are becoming proponents of openness in education. The Cool4Ed library was established by California legislation that called for the establishment of an open educational resources council and a digital open source library. Community colleges have started an OER Degree Initiative to create entire degree programs that exclusively use open textbooks and online resources. The open education movement has also for the first time succeeded in allotting federal funds for the creation of open and free textbooks. Open education still has a long way to go, but it’s slowly becoming a reality.

Todd Bryant is a language technology specialist at Dickinson College.