OER Foundation

Founded in 2009, the OER Foundation has successfully nurtured an international OER development community, advanced OER interoperability, and led a New Zealand initiative for teachers to create, share, repurpose, and reuse digital content that supports the national curriculum. It is now leading a project to create an OER university (OERu), an innovative partnership of institutions creating pathways for OER learners to gain academic credit through the formal education system. Although it does not confer degrees or qualifications, OERu would work with accredited institutions to provide credit for OER learning on the path to widely accepted credentials. This model could help accredit learners in both formal and informal education.

The OER Foundation fosters an international OER development community and helps educators and educational institutions achieve their objectives through OER. This grant would finance several projects that advocate the free sharing of knowledge worldwide. The model encourages institutions to recognize OER and provide academic credit.

The OER Foundation provides leadership, international networking, and support for educators and institutions to achieve their objectives through open education. The foundation will (a) lead projects through the international OERu network that encourage sharing knowledge freely in a sustainable way, (b) connect individuals and organizations on a global scale to achieve their open education objectives, and (c) provide professional consulting support to institutions of higher education. This work promotes more widespread adoption and effective use of OER in higher education.