Open Educational Resources Movement (in short OERM) - currently an alien term to most of these geographical locations - is the next best thing that can happen to accelerate tangible progress in the history of human development. The advent of www (internet plus browser) in early nineties held potential of a large scale awakening ever. But, the inevitable is on hold since then. Therefore, much of the current endeavors worldwide are actually targeted to address issues, which have been responsible for holding back this rare opportunity available to mankind in the form of OER.

The core functionality of "www" platform is dissemination of information and knowledge - the basic element of an effective education system. This is how all activities around OER area are, now, designed to be implemented. It is, then, important to know what has delayed the inevitable. What are those critical issues that need to be prioritized and how? OERM's progress largely depends in answering and solving these puzzles.

On the world scene - thanks to the collectives of people, organizations and government bodies, things are finally coming out of the closet. It would be too much for asking at this stage, but definitely there are signs everywhere that OER might actually take off and meet the expectations the world has in it. Last five years had been eventful from the point of view of OER movement. The most important event, in this regard, had been the MIT’s initiative to put its content for the world to use. This actually has galvanized the movement in a single stroke. Universities after universities across the world are falling in line to emulate and improvise the process and at the same time create a flux that ensures people joining the movement in greater numbers.

The success of MIT’s OER (let us use a generic term) initiative, points to the basic requirements of a successful initiative. If we visit MIT site, then we shall soon realize – “what makes it different to others?” They are (i) availability of a comprehensive list of courses and (ii) available choices within a subject area. Again, it is surprising that though many of the courses are nothing but assortment of bullet pointed .PPT presentation, but that serves the purpose to a certain extent as the same is often complimented with more verbose course posted alongside on similar topics/subjects. We can imagine the impact when MIT eventually converts these lecture notes into a fully documented leveraged course material.

Now turning away from MIT, we can visualize easily that it is all but the beginning. There is lot to be done and done more effectively. OER’s significance is not limited to institutions. That has precisely been the hall mark of www platform. It is not bounded. The scope is infinite – from imparting preparatory lessons for grade I to teaching RICE electrical engineering course to an aspiring engineer in Vietnam.

The content is the key. The creative commons appears to be a good starting point to incite authors to collaborate and contribute. The big question is whether the environment of OER content development is good enough to cope up with the requirement in hand. This is an important decision as lack of content actually harms the movement in more ways than we could think. Inadequacy of content translates in wasting all other auxiliary investments in hardware and bandwidth - ultimately loosing youths away from the movement, all the time.

Knowing browser technology as we have worked with it for a decade, we can realize that it has been precisely the lack of content that it took so long to start the process. Even today, the best of the courses - including MIT course - is not even using 50 % of browser’s capability that was developed 10 years ago! Had it not been the committed individuals, organizations, universities and governments; we might as well have to be contended with blinking materials, colored texts and aborted efforts.

The decade old experience has underlined few hard realities about OER. First, private investment is practically nil as on date and is unlikely to be there for many more years except where philanthropy is involved. Second, individual OERM effort is unlikely to be meaningful without an international structure to back the effort. Third, inadequacy of content constitutes the main problem area in realizing OER's true potential.

A scan of the efforts in the last decade is a pointer to the danger of large scale diversification of approach in content development. There are brilliant isolated works splattered around, but essentially all of them are ritually incomplete and, if left to them, will never be completed. This is how exactly the unlimited potential of web based education system could not be realized - though technology was developed long ago to meet the requirement. The collaborative or structure based content development, therefore, is the step "1" for an effective OERM without any distinction between developed and developing divide.

The superiority of internationally accessible, web based, education system is well established. There is no argument on this. The technology and its pace of advancement ensure that the future educational environment will ultimately relegate conventional educational methods to a minor role. So what holds us is the time taking, arduous task of developing meaningful courses to form the backbone of OERM. Ultimately, it is the “value of the educational system” that will empower OERM with its true worth. The current euphoria to initiatives is essentially an inquisitive response of internet accessing population. The real test of these initiatives is still to come, when users will seek value for the time, effort and comparative advantages that open source education system provides to them as against the conventional platform.

The education, besides other things, is an instrument of change of human existence in developing world. Governments in association with international organizations, realizing the importance of education, have worked hard to spread primary education and literacy to various degrees of success. Though, millions are still grappling to hold on the threads of a decent life, people are awakening to their role in society and governance. The stage is set to take the step forward, where higher education is in the realm of access without any discrimination.

Education means many things here in this part of world. It means participation in governance; changing socio- political equations; ability to fight discrimination; birth control; enlarging economic activities; enhancing democratic process; improving health care and so on. The question here is not whether OERM will impact the process of human emancipation or not? It is a foregone conclusion. The real question is about implementation side that should be addressed properly.

Developing countries, on the whole, lacks the requisite hardware in place. Penetration of data bandwidth in places away from metropolis is non-existent. These places need induced environment for implementing OERM. On the other hand, cities are witnessing influx of very high order, necessitating measures to contain the process so that brimming cities can hold on the sanity.

In short, the OERM implementation needs an all together different approach in developing countries. For the time being till the bandwidth is cheaply available, the focus of OERM has to be institutions of various kinds, starting from primary school to different levels of higher education. This essentially means engaging government, institutions and communities on a sustained basis with an implicit goal to spread bandwidth as far and as deep as possible by leveraging satellite communication channels.

Though, the percentage numbers of data bandwidth users are dismal in most of these countries, but the absolute numbers of potential users of educational material are actually greater than many developed countries due to large population base. It may be reckoned that these regions are actually producing more skilled manpower (engineers and doctors), where OERM can become the stimuli to raise quality and standards.

The initiatives, therefore, shall need to be open to the local requirement as against simply pacing a uniform OER structure. For example, there are about a million students in India, who are engaged in intense study cycle (intermediate and graduate level) every year to get into professional courses. Availability of good educational material tailored to the requirement has guaranteed takers in developing world. Similarly, the implementation of OER in developed countries needs to be moderated with respect to local requirements.

We can, however, appreciate that the OER differences are limited to implementation - not the "content" of education, which is universal in nature. Local influences , as far as content is concerned, are largely about the degree of emphasis that may vary from one place to another. It is experienced that the content difference and local emphasis are usually reconciled over time. As a matter of fact, OER effort can draw its biggest strength from the universal character of education, providing a commonality of purpose that can be used to promote OERM with a global character.

The variations and versioning apart, OERM needs initiatives to capitalize on existing infrastructure in developing countries, while keeping in mind about the expected improvement in the years to come. The process, then, can spread to strengthen the basic universal goal of quality education, beginning from the birth of a child.