Open Oregon, along with a broad coalition of more than 90 education, library, technology, public interest, and legal organizations, called on the White House to take administrative action ensuring that federally funded educational materials are made available as Open Educational Resources (OER) that are free to use, share, and improve. The full letter can be found at http://www.oerusa.org.
The Federal Government invests billions of taxpayer dollars each year in programs that include the creation of instructional materials through grants, contracts, and other cooperative agreements. While these materials are created for the public good, they are generally not open to the members of the public who paid for them. At a time when educational opportunity, workforce development, and access to knowledge are critical to America’s future, these valuable publicly-funded resources should be openly available to students, teachers, businesses, workers, and the public to use in new and innovative ways.
“This investment produces educational resources ranging from innovative curricular resources to workforce training materials to English language learning tools,” said Nicole Allen, SPARC Director of Open Education. “We’re grateful for President Obama’s leadership in advancing public access to publicly funded resources and urge the Administration to use this opportunity to make federally funded educational materials available as Open Educational Resources that are free to use, share, and improve.”
