UN University just released a updated version of the book ‘The Why and How of Open Education’.

This book is an introduction to Open Education (OE), giving practical guidance on the design and delivery of OE courses while wrestling with theoretical considerations of this new and emerging domain. Educators are the main targets, but it will also be relevant to policy makers, senior education managers and the learning industry as a whole.
The book draws from three sources: first from well-established online learning ecosystems, including Open Source Software communities; second from existing Open Courses in traditional formal education and related design models such as the Meta-design framework (Fischer, 2007); and third from EU funded research and pilot projects: FLOSSCom (2006-2008), openSE (2009-2011) and openED (2009-2012). This piloting work enabled a thorough analysis and modification of assumptions that emerged from sources one and two.

The first chapter provides a brief introduction to the OE field, addressing the question: ‘Why Open Education?’. The second chapter presents case studies from the openSE and openED projects on how OE might look in practice. Sustainability is as important for OE as for traditional formal education, so before joining any kind of OE venture it is important to have a clear understanding of how such a venture would be sustained, as discussed in chapter three. Theoretical considerations and practical guidance for the design and delivery of OE are presented in chapter four. The fifth chapter highlights some of the key challenges towards the implementation of OE, based on the piloting results and stakeholder consultation that were carried out within the openSE and openED projects. Concluding remarks and future prospects are presented in the sixth and final chapter.

You can read the book online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/71348644 or download it here as PDF.