INTRODUCTION:

This project should make a significant contribution to the knowledge and practice of distance education within the Asia region.

Through this proposed study, the network will look into the use of Open Educational Resources (OER’s) in the region especially with the view to encouraging the development of an OER community that would share learning resources across institutions and nations. A fortuitous coming together of pedagogy ( i.e. recognition that effective learning can be best engineered by creating small biteable chunks of content referred to as Learning Objects) and technology, since the early part of this decade, permitted digitizing of content which then allowed for their movement through the web and the net, with considerable ease. These developments help to further enhance increasing access to learning, improve the quality of the curriculum, reduce the cost of creating learning resources and increase the greater use of learning technologies. While the OER’s can generally enrich and enhance the delivery of education sector wide, it has particular significance to provisions of distance education (DE) simply because it can help in achieving economies, given the hall-marks of DE, which are scale and reach. OER’s in DE has the potential to improve the quality of DE through the seamless portability of content, across boundaries of one kind or another.

The term ‘Open Educational Resources’ (OER’s) was first adopted at a UNESCO forum in 2002. These resources are ‘digitized [learning] materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research’[1].:.OER’s includes

Learning Content: Full courses, courseware, content modules, learning objects, collections and journals.
Tools: Software to support the development, use, re-use and delivery of learning content, including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools and online learning communities.
Implementation Resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing materials, institutional agreements, design principles of best practice, and localization of content.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

SURVEY:

RESEARCH TEAM

OERASIA TEAM MEMBER	REGION AND AFFILIATION
Professor Emeritus Gajaraj Dhanarajan (Principle investigator) ( gdhan@wou.edu.my)	Malaysia: Wawasan Open University (WOU)
Professor Tsuneo Yamada ( tsyamada@ouj.ac.jp)	Japan: Open University of Japan (OUJ)
Professor Yong Kim ( dragonknou@gmail.com)	S. Korea: Korea National Open University (KNOU)
Professor Li Yawan ( ly@crtvu.edu.cn)	China: Beijing Open University (BJOU)
Dr Yuen Kin Sun ( ksyuen@ouhk.edu.hk) Mr Alex Wong	Hong Kong China: Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK)
Professor Patricia Arinto ( patricia.arinto@gmail.com)	Philippines: University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU)
Professor Daryono ( daryono.daryono@gmail.com)	Indonesia: Universitas Terbuka Indonesia (UT)
Dr Minh Do ( minhdo@vnfoundation.org)	Vietnam: Vietnam Foundation
Dr Venkataraman Balaji ( vbalaji@col.org)	India: Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
Dr Bharathi Harishankar ( omkarbharathi@yahoo.com)	India: University of Madras
Mr Ishan Abeywardena ( ishansa@wou.edu.my)	Malaysia: Wawasan Open University (WOU)
Ms Khoo Suan Choo ( sckhoo@wou.edu.my)	Administrative Support: Wawasan Open University (WOU)
Mr Lim Choo Khai ( cklimck@gmail.com)	Research Assistant: Wawasan Open University (WOU)