Essay Shall Look Into the Various Aspects of Open Educational

Question: Explain Essay Shall Look Into the Various Aspects of Open Educational? Answer: Introducation: It is a known fact that many of the universities across the globe use open education soft wares, in order to carry out their daily educational activities. These soft wares are easily available, energy efficient and are most importantly free. Thus, they can be easily accessed from any and every place and can be used by any number of users across the world (Wiley et al, 2014). There are a number of advantages which make the open education resources and soft wares an instant hit amongst the educational fraternity, however there prolonged usage for development of students and their career opportunities remains a debate. Open education resources which are also known as OERs are a set of freely accessible documents whereby the license is also open and contains media which is extremely useful for purposes including teaching, learning and access for research respectively. These are serving as one of the most leading trends in the arena of distance education and open learning pedagogies as it is available for free and open for all. The motivation to promote open type of educational resources in most of the times motivated by a desire to enhance or simply increase the educational paradigm of the students (Butcher, 2015). Many schools and colleges and even universities across the world utilize more than 85% of the information system online and it has transitioned from a close source, over the years to open source software. Ubuntu is one of the most common operating systems which are being used amongst teachers and students as it can be used with the aspect of being diskless client. Due to this, primary open source programs like Libre office, Scribus, Gimp, Inkscape etc are largely used by the university lecturers and students across the world in order to deal with their day to day aspects (Hisslop et al, 2015). As these soft wares are available for free, it is quite easy to keep them updated all the time as per the latest versions available, unlike commercial soft wares. This has an immense impact on the overall financial accounting of the university as there is a huge amount of savings which otherwise is absolutely mandatory for institutional registration of soft wares. The licensing costs are very h igh and a large amount of money is to be invested while obtaining license of software for institutional usage. If the actual set of users are checked who constantly use open educational software, a great diversity is obtained in terms of creators, users as well sponsors who provide sponsorship for the same. Thus, there are corresponding variety in cases and requirements. Due to this, it will be prudent to consider the various descriptions associated with the open educational resources as these descriptions are a part of it. There is a greater degree of tension whenever it comes to reaching a conclusion regarding the kind of description to be associated with the OER as far as the emphasis on technological aspects is concerned (Farrow et al, 2015). For instance, if we consider a video clip, it can be successfully used openly and freely without actually streaming the same. In the same way, a book can be such which is a freely useable electronic piece of document. As the presence of open educational resources is for providing education to a larger educational community, those organizations which use open educational resources might not actually award degrees based on them or their knowledge. In fact, many of these organizations do not even provide any kind of academic support or administrative support to its staff or to the students who are seeking credits for their college exams (Dolores Gallego et al, 2015). The technology utilizes a number of commercial types of soft wares and devices, for instance, the I device , but many times there is a discussion regarding whether open education soft wares make the students technologically sound or whether these open education soft wares have the efficiency to make the students achieve the best of grades. Though the faculty members are divided as far s the utility and learning pedagogy of students in concerned, a few lecturers are of the opinion that the learning curve decreases when students try to learn from open education soft wares. However, on one side the complaint is regarding the utility of open education software, on the other end there is so much of revolution happening across the world in order to completely personalize the process of education for every student, so as to ensure significant achievement, provide greater amount of flexibility as well as amount of choice. The overall aim is also to ensure that in this whole exercise, the higher standards of education are maintained and implemented at places where it is not there previously, along with the empowerment of learning through the comprehensive and continuous use of newer technological innovations. There is absolutely no doubt regarding the fact that a few of those open educational resources are not polished enough or mature enough to be used for all as compared to commercial soft wares widely available, however, the decision of using which platform largely depends upon the wide availability of free soft wares which are present for a particular study aspect as against the commercial one which is definitely pricy. The main aim is to ensure that the students are prepared to face the actual real competitive world, conduct businesses and prepare themselves for dealing with life stresses (Marcus-Quinn et al, 2013). There are definitely a set of advantages while using the Open education resources. A few of them include the reduction in the license costs and an overall cost of ownership which is nil, privilege of using the tool for education at any place without having any kind of restriction on time, based on the needs as recognized by the user, these tools can be customized. The administration of the open education resources are largely dependent on expertise level as well as the community we are catering to. Overall these soft wares are efficient in terms of energy, sustainable and have low cost associated with them. In fact, open educational resources serve as a big platform for collaboration and innovation, due to their support towards innumerable students who are getting benefitted as a result of it. Probably, if the onus is on using only registered and licensed commercial resources for educational purposes, then the students might not really use it due to the heavy costs which are involved and in this process we are hampering their innovative growth as well as any constructive opportunity towards innovative things (Freeman et al, 2013). There is a very specific purpose which is associated with the commercial soft wares, and it is earning of profit as well as increasing the overall earnings of those holding the shares. While, it will be a mistake to quote that commercial soft wares do not have any applications, they definitely serve the purpose perfectly, but in the event of having an alternative option for free, it is always a good idea to weigh the same and check if it is worth the price to buy the commercial one. For instance, if free and open education resources are to be considered, Open Office or Libre office are excellent initiatives which are almost at par with the pricy commercial versions (Tsaie t al, 2016). The open source resources have come into existence for collaborating and creating a society which is based on specific and common needs (Patel and Parsley, 2015). A few members form a community which gel along with one another in order to fulfill and collaborate towards a specified form of service or type of requirement respectively. The entire cost for the development is shared and improvements are being provided in the software as per the requirement thereby satisfying the need. For instance, Moodle is an excellent example to prove the same (Yuan et al, 2013). Moodle was initially started with limited applications but as its importance amongst the educational institutes grew, many aspects were added edited and reloaded as per the current needs and it happens to be one of the most openly used educational resource. Infact the utility of open source soft wares is immense as they go a long way in building the network and IT community for the students as they are well aware regarding the various attributes which are associated with these freely available online educational soft wares (Poole et al, 2014). I think that the use of these freely available open educational soft wares help the students to gain vital knowledge which help them to adjust in the professional job front. Though the use of these soft wares, the skills are developed this can easily be transferred when using commercially available paid soft wares (Bishop et al, 2016). It is in most of the cases, the cost which force the universities to adopt the open educational resources or soft ware. However, since these soft wares are also equally competent and have room for modification and innovation, along with the slow and smooth transformation for the students to use commercial soft wares as well, there is definitely no constructive logic towards utilization of only proprietary soft wares. References Patel, D. and Parsley, S., 2015. Open educational resources.Community eye health/International Centre for Eye Health,28(90), p.34. Marcus-Quinn, A. and Diggins, Y., 2013. Open educational resources.Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences,93, pp.243-246. Yuan, L., Powell, S. and CETIS, J., 2013. MOOCs and open education: Implications for higher education. Butcher, N., 2015.A basic guide to open educational resources (OER). Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver and UNESCO. Wiley, D., Bliss, T.J. and McEwen, M., 2014. 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Gallego, M.D., Bueno, S., Racero, F.J. and Noyes, J., 2015. Open source software: The effects of training on acceptance.Computers in Human Behavior,49, pp.390-399. Hislop, G.W. and Ellis, H.J., 2015, September. Practical Experiences for IT Students in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Projects. InProceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education(pp. 99-99). ACM.