For more than a decade the creation and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) has been increasing around the globe. The OER World Map collects and visualizes data on the growing number of actors and activities in the field of open education worldwide. The goal is to support the evolution of the global OER ecosystem by providing a comprehensive and responsive picture of the OER movement. The information provided can be used for a wide range of purposes, including:
Connecting actors with each other facilitating co-operation and sharing of resources and knowledge
Providing qualified lists of repositories and other OER services to help teachers and learners find educational resources relevant to them
Supporting policy makers in taking and defending strategic decisions by providing meaningful statistics and overviews of the open education movement and its associated impacts
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The OER World Map is intended to provide the information needed to support the self-organization processes of the OER movement. In addition to mapping relevant organisations, projects, people and services, the platform provides social networking, allows the identification of OER collections, and supports decision making. Taken together, the OER World Map can be seen as a kind of ‘operations room’ for the open education community.