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Open and Affordable Educational Resources

This guide supports UMD instructors and students with creating and using open educational resources (OER), affordable course materials, and open pedagogy.

What About Other "Open"s?

Open education efforts focus specifically on teaching and curriculum as part of the broader landscape of open knowledge. The multiple interrelated open movements challenge systemic barriers to information access and scholarly communications. Proponents of Open frame educational and research outputs as public goods, arguing that sharing and collaboration foster higher-quality end products, advance global research goals, and enhance humanity's ability to address grand challenges.

In addition to open education, open knowledge efforts include open access, open data, open science, and open source software, among others.

A large circle labeled "Open Knowledge" contains five smaller circles, each labeled with a major type of open knowledge: Open Access, Open Data, Open Education, Open Source Software, and Open Science.

You may be familiar with related Open initiatives and communities at the University of Maryland, including:

Learn More About Open