History of OERs

The first official instance of open educational resources was by the Free Software Foundation in 1985. In 2002, the term “open educational resources” was coined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 2014, the Council of Chief State School Officers conducted a survey to determine the need for a nationwide initiative around OER. The results of that survey can be found here. The survey determined that the vast majority of states were interested in learning more about, developing, promoting, and using OER. Some of the goals that were common among interested states included creation of consistent and supportive policy to curate OER, vetting of high-quality materials, curating easy to use OER for educators, support for collaboration, and dedication to funding OER projects.

In February 2016, the Michigan Department of Education joined the United States Department of Education’s #GoOpen Campaign. Michigan committed to becoming a #GoOpen state, supporting school districts and educators in the transition to using high-quality OER. Michigan’s initial work on open educational resources focused on supporting social studies through the Michigan Open Book project. Support in other content areas is found at the Michigan Microsite on OER Commons. To learn more about Michigan’s initiatives around open educational resources, please visit the #GoOpen Michigan page at the Michigan Department of Education website.

Additional Resources:

Open Education: Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education - http://tech.ed.gov/open/

OER Handbooks for Educators 1.0 - http://wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator_version_one