(C) Emerald Group Publishing CHAPTER 1 HOW DOES OPEN EDUCATION WORK? Markus Deimann and Peter Sloep ABSTRACT For an extended period of time education was mainly formal, that is a system with clear roles, goals and responsibilities. Education resembled an immutable and closed system with few, if any, connections to other parts of society. However, during the last century significant changes occurred in many areas of society, culminating in global reform move- ments to democratise education and to increase participation by opening up education. A current and prominent example of such a movement is Open Educational Resources (OER), which is a global attempt to facili- tate the flow of knowledge, reduce the costs of education, and establish an educational system based on humanistic and moral values (i.e. sharing). Yet, recent developments are progressing at such an accelerated speed that it is hard to predict the ‘real’ value of OERs for educational pur- poses. Also, within OER little reference has been made to previous forms of Open Education, such as Open Classroom/Open Learning in the 1960s and 1970s or to the even older German progressive education (Reformpa ¨dagogik). Current OE forms can be characterised as a mix- ture of economical (‘education as a commodity’), moral (‘education as a common good’) and social (‘education as a shared enterprise’) claims, each of which contribute to the emergence of Open Education. This Openness and Education Advances in Digital Education and Lifelong Learning, Volume 1, 1À23 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 2051-2295/doi:10.1108/S2051-2295(2013)0000000001 1