Open education can take a number of forms:
- education for all: free or very low cost school, college or university education available to everyone within a particular jurisdiction, usually funded primarily through the state;
- open access to programs that lead to full, recognised qualifications. These are offered by national open universities or more recently by the OERu;
- open access to courses or programs that are not for formal credit, although it may be possible to acquire badges or certificates for successful completion. MOOCs are a good example;
- open educational resources that instructors or learners can use for free. MIT’s OpenCourseware, which provides free online downloads of MIT’s video recorded lectures and support material, is one example;
- open textbooks, online textbooks that are free for students to use;
- open research, whereby research papers are made available online for free downloading;
- open data, that is, data open to anyone to use, reuse, and redistribute, subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share.