Open Educational Resources (OER):
Major Initiatives in India
Uma Kanjilal
Indira Gandhi National Open University
New Delhi
Definition of OER
• “Digitised material offered freely and
openly to educate students and
independent learners to use and reuse for
teaching, learning and research”.
Term coined in 2002 in UNESCO Forum on impact of
Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing
countries.
Comparing related terms
OA
sharing content,
usually of
scholarly nature,
without a
requirement for
the use of an
Open license
OER
educational
content that is
shared under
an Open
license
OCW
sharing open
content that is
developed
specifically to
instruct a
course
E-learning
electronic
instructional
resources
that are not
necessarily
Openly
licensed
Open Movements
1. Open Source
2. Open Content
3. Open Educational Resources
4. Open Text Books
5. Open Degrees
6. Open Knowledge
Open Collections and Repositories
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Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/
Wikiversity http://wikiversity.org/
Connexions (Rice University) http://cnx.org/
MERLOT http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
Knowledge Hub http://khub.itesm.mx/
Flicker CC http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
UNESCO http://portal.unesco.org/
Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/index.php
I Tunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
You Tube http://www.youtube.com/
Major University based OER Collections
• MIT http://ocw.mit.edu/
• Open University
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
• Open Learning Initiative (OLI)- CMU
http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
• eGyanKosh- IGNOU
http://www.egyankosh.ac.in
• United Nations University
http://www.unu.edu/
Major Learning Object Repository Initiatives
• MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for
Learning and Online Teaching)
• CAREO (Campus Alberta Repository of Educational
Objects)
• Connexions
• NPTEL (126 web courses and 115 video courses)
• NCERT Text Books
• CEC LOR repository
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Uma Kanjilal, IGNOU
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Barriers to OER Movement
• intellectual property rights and digital rights
management- Creative Commons license
• Discoverability- OERCommons, Creative
Commons search, and OCWC Course
Finder
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National Knowledge Commission (NKC)
Recommendations
• Use of globally available Open
Educational Resources (OER) and Open
Access (OA) as a means of radically
increasing the widespread availability of
high-quality educational resources
• Setting up of a National Education
Foundation to develop web based
common open resources
OA, Open Source and OER:
Status in India
• Active player in the open source software movement, and OA
movement –
• Increasing availability of OA electronic journals, OA institutional
repositories and open source software-based repositories such
as DSpace and EPrints.
• scientific journals accessible as OA
• Indian Institute of Science of Bangalore, along with Carnegie
Mellon University, along with 21 Indian institutions have digitised
more than 450,000 books, 220,000 of which are now web
accessible
• Open Source tools in education- Brihaspati and Vmukti
• Major initiatives like NMEICT and NPTEL to develop open
educational content
National Mission on Education
through Information and
Communication Technology
(NME-ICT)
• The Mission approved by the Government of
India on the 2nd January, 2009.
• NMEICT launched on 3rd February, 2009.
• It is a Centrally sponsored scheme which entails
75% contribution from the Centre and 25% from
States/Institutions for connectivity. In the case of
NER, the ratio is 90:10.
• 100% contribution from Centre for content
generation.
• 50% contribution from Centre for devices.
Broad Objectives
• To use ICT in enhancing teaching and
learning.
• To reach hitherto deprived sections and
rural / under-developed areas.
• To help in raising the GER in higher
education by 5% in the current Five Year
Plan.
Major ongoing projects under the Mission
• National Programme of Technology
Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)
• Virtual Labs
• Educational Resource Planning (ERP)
• Mobile e-Learning Terminals (MeLT)
• E-books and e-journals (N-LIST)
• Haptic devices
Sakshat Portal
Objectives of the Sakshat Portal
Sakshat: An Official Website of NME-ICT
• Provide updates on the National Mission on Education
through ICT (NMEICT)
• Keep record of meetings of the different Committees of
the Mission
• Platform for project uploading, reviewing and monitoring
• Provide one stop access to all e-content developed
under the Mission as well as open access and licensed
e-journals and e-books
• Manage scholarships of the MHRD
• Provide virtual learning platform for the learners with built
in interactivity
Sakshat Modules
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Project Management System
Scholarship Management System
Learning Resource Repository
E-book and e-journal portal
Virtual Classroom
Live webcasting and video on demand
Four Quadrant Approach
1st Quad
2nd Quad
e-Content
PDF / e-Books / illustration , video
demonstrations / document
arising & Interactive simulations
wherever required
e-Tutorial
Content Video + Audio in
an organised form,
Animation, Simulations,
Virtual Labs
4th Quad
3rd Quad
Web Resources
Related Links, Wikipedia
Development of Course, Open
Content in Internet, Case Studies,
Anecdotal information, Historical
development of the subject, Articles
Self Assessment
MCQ, Problems, Quizzes,
Assignments & solutions, Online
feedback through discussion
forums & setting up the FAQ ,
General Misconceptions
Virtual Class
April
8, 2015
Uma Kanjilal,
IGNOU
21
National Programme on Technology
Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)
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http://www.nptel.iitm.ac.in,
http://youtube.com/nptelhrd/
open courseware initiative by seven
Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)
and the Indian Institute of Science
(IISc)
objective of NPTEL program is to
enhance the quality of engineering
education in the country by developing
curriculum based video and web
courses
supplementary content for 129 web
courses in engineering/science and
humanities
110 courses have been developed in
video format, with each course
comprising of approximately 40 or
more one-hour lectures
Proposed for Virtual Technical
University
eGyanKosh (e=electronic, gyan= knowledge,
kosh= repository) of IGNOU
http://www.egyankosh.ac.in
• Collection of more
than 30000 covering
95% of the IGNOU
SIMs and 1600
videos
• Webcasting of
Broadcast channels
• Wiki for Collaborative
content generation
FlexiLearn Main Page
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A Move Towards Flexible Learning
Environment
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Course wise registration and assessment
Modular approach to earn course credits for
obtaining a diploma or degree
Academic Advisors for each course
E-portfolio for a formal record of all formal and
informal studies carried out by the registered
learner
On demand assessment
LOR Consortium for Educational
Communication (CEC)
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www.cec-lor.edu.in
www.cec-lor.edu.in/search.asp
www.cec-lor.edu.in/dvr/
CEC is an inter-university centre on
electronic media underthe University Grants
Commission (UGC)
CEC in coordination with its 17 Educational
Multimedia Research Centres produces
television programmes in various subject
categories in English, Hindi and regional
languages
A/V programmes are syllabus-based topics
taught in schools, polytechnics, colleges and
universities
CEC Learning Object Repository (LOR) and
the Digital Video Repository (DVR) provides
worldwide access to these qualitative
learning resources
NCERT Online Textbooks
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http://www.ncert.nic.in/textbooks/
NCERT is an apex resource
organization set up by the
Government of India to assist and
advise the Central and State
Governments on academic
matters related to school level
education
NCERT publishes school
textbooks, mainly in English, Hindi
and Urdu.
School textbooks are now freely
available on the Internet for
students and teachers through its
website
Most of the textbooks available in
this portal are new editions, based
on the National Curriculum
Framework 2005.
Other Projects
• Ekalavya, launched by IIT, Bombay an open education initiative
for content development in various Indian languages. Open
Source Educational Resources Animation Repository (OSCAR)
that provides web-based interactive animations for teachingis
part of the project.
• Project on curriculum based content to address the information
needs of the undergraduate students of science through National
Science Digital Library (NSDL) initiative under the aegis of
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
Issues and Challenges
• Most of them in nascent stage of
development
• Mostly not following any standards,
• Based on Web 1.0 tools, migration towards
Web 2.0 necessary
• None of them available under Creative
Commons Licences
• How to enhance and relate to teaching
learning process?
• How to cater to heterogeneous group
needs?
Thank You
ukanjilal@ignou.ac.in