Link: Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education (pdf)

Higher education institutions around the world have been using the Internet and other digital technologies to develop and distribute teaching and learning for decades. Recently, Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained increased attention for their potential and promise to obviate demographic, economic, and geographic educational boundaries and to promote life-long learning and personalised learning. The rapid growth of OER provides new opportunities for teaching and learning, at the same time, they challenge established views about teaching and learning practices in higher education.
This briefing provides the background to the current development of and future trends around OER aimed at adding to our understanding, stimulating ongoing debate among the JISC community and developing a research agenda. The briefing is structured in three sections:

• Discussion on the conceptual and contextual issues of Open Educational Resources.
• A review of current OER initiatives: their scale, approaches, main issues and challenges.
• Discussion on trends emerging in Open Educational Resources, with respect to future research and activities.

[pdf http://publications.cetis.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/OER_Briefing_Paper_CETIS.pdf]