Introduction to Open Education, Recommendations, and Documents

5. Dimension: Opening Access to Education (Access)

Opening access to education means removing economic, technological, geographical, and institutional barriers to knowledge and education. It refers to creating conditions that allow everyone to engage in formal or informal learning, with or without the support of digital technologies.

From the perspective of an educational institution, opening access to education can be promoted at four levels:

access to open programs leading to a degree or qualification
access to open courses, didactically prepared content for the purpose of teaching a specific topic, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs)
access to content, namely various types of openly licensed educational materials, such as texts, images, podcasts, etc.
access at a transversal level (accessibility), making content easily understandable and accessible to everyone, including persons with special learning needs or special physical needs. This also implies increased access to networks and communities of practice, including all applicable educational services offered by educational institutions