Concept

Open education is a philosophy about the opportunity everyone should have to study and to have access to certain knowledge. This type of education encompasses resources, tools and practices than can be chared and fuly used in the digital environment. People who have proponed open education believe everyone in the world have the right of having a high-quality education, so they work to eliminate the barriers and the limits it has.

The foundation of Open Education is Open Educational Resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research resources which are free of barriers and limits. They also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license. This permission allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere, as well as to modify, translate, change or add any type of other information.

The Open Education Consortium is a global network of educational institutions, individuals and organizations that support an approach to education based on openness, including collaboration, innovation and collective development and use of open educational materials. The Open Education Consortium is a non-profit, social benefit organization registered in the United States and operating worldwide. This organisation has declared that: "Sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built."