OER are applicable only for distance learning or highly digital/ICT fulled education

Although the use of OER very often supports ICT education and most of popular OER projects are digital, OER and digital resources are not synonyms. Openly licensed content is produced in any medium: paper-based text, video, audio or computer-based multimedia. Teaching staff can harness OER to enhance e-learning courses or build upon Massive Open Online Courses, but this does not mean that OER are necessarily e-learning or any other kind of online learning/teaching. The core of the OER concept assumes that OER should be multi-platform. In practice this mean that they are produced as such or are able to be easily adaptable to: print version, low bandwidth, different devices as well as accessible for users with disabilities.

According to a recent survey carried out by the European Commission on ICT in schools, the bandwidth and connectivity are still challenges in most of countries around the world (not only developing countries). Thus it would be expected that programmes (especially publicly funded), devoted to creation of open content should be aimed at providing printable resources, rather than supplying educational systems with ICT understood as a must-be condition for OER use for wide scale.

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Open and distance learning, OER and change in higher education, COL, Athabasca University