OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER): OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

Creation of knowledge workers holds key for success of a country. Unfortunately, many of the countries though having chain of human resources yet are unable to transform human resources to their advantage as they face multiple challenges like poverty, poor economy, poor infrastructure, limited access to education and inadequate technological growth. Fortunately, India is one of among such countries in the recent past which has improved its position in the world forum and has taken a big stride by transforming human resource into knowledge workers. The entire credit goes to government of India, their schemes and most importantly the people working tirelessly in the higher education institutions. But, the percentage is very low.The reason is higher education of India is plagued with several challenges like poor quality of teachers, poor infrastructure, poor libraries and poor educational resources. Unless high quality of education both in terms of infrastructure and academic is not provided and sustained in all higher education institutes, it will be difficult to match with global world. One way it could be done at least in academic front is developing and disseminating quality educational material among the institutes of higher education. National Knowledge Commission has recommended that problems of educational material to a large extent can be reduced by Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA). The easy and widespread availability of high quality educational material will change the paradigm of teaching and learning and thus improve the quality of education. Government of India has started several innovative programs and schemes like SHAKSHAT, NMEICT, NPTEL, OSCAR, E-grid etc. related to developing and disseminating educational resources. The national and global level are tremendous but it comes with many challenges specifically in a country like India which has a diversified population.The present paper will try to focus on the opportunities and challenges with respect to OER in Indian higher education.