Quality Assurance for Open Educational Resources: What’s the difference? (Pre-print)

Abstract

The emergence of Open Educational Resources (OERs) movement has been adopted by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) as one of the ways to promote access to quality educational materials in the developing countries of the Commonwealth. While OER brings in several advantages, issues of quality remain a concern. The Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), a regional centre of COL has been engaged in developing guidelines for quality assurance of OER. This paper presents the quality guidelines for OER using the TIPS framework. While the authors emphasize on the need for quality guidelines, they recommend teachers and learners should be able to use the criteria to decide quality of OER from different perspectives. The paper also argues the need for appropriate policy for OER, capacity building, use of appropriate technology, and development of exemplar courses to promote OER quality.