Open and Collaborative Resources

Teachers, learners and authors around the world are increasingly seeing the potential of open educational resources. As part of a broader movement to open up education, these resources can increase access to learning opportunities and encourage more collaborative, student-centric learning. The Shuttleworth Foundation works closely with the innovators and activists who are bringing this movement to life.

At the most basic level open educational resources are simply textbooks, teaching notes and other materials that can be freely accessed, modified and copied by any teacher or student. However, like open source software, they also have the potential to act as the raw material for collaborative innovation, with teachers and students improving, extending and localising resources as a part of a group learning process.

Realising the potential of open educational resources means getting your hands dirty; writing, editing, piloting and promoting content that teachers and students rely upon. For this reason the Shuttleworth Foundation backs efforts to collaboratively create textbooks, course-ware and other materials for use at school level.

The Foundation is committed to developing, testing and documenting new methods for collaboratively producing educational content with the belief that that open and collaborative resources should be a cornerstone of the education system, both in South Africa and around the world. The Foundation actively nurtures networks of authors, educators, policy makers and other funders who share this belief, knowing that we must work together to reach our ultimate goal of more accessible and effective learning for all.