Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available for anybody to use, re-use and re-distribute for teaching, learning and research. There are many types of resources made available online as OER, including worksheets, curriculum materials, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, class activities, pedagogical materials, games and other resources. The most common source of open education material is material licensed under the Creative Commons licensing system. Creative Commons is a 'some rights reserved' model, as opposed to the 'all rights reserved' model of copyright law.  Under a Creative Commons licence, the copyright owner retains ownership in their work while inviting certain uses of their work by others. OER can dramatically reduce the costs of obtaining educational materials for use in schools, making an important contribution to the most pressing problem facing education systems around the world: delivering better results with fewer resources.

Over one third of Australian students believe that the education system has failed to engage them or meet their learning needs, according to a large-scale survey in 2012. Such beliefs reflect the education system's struggle to keep up with social, economic and technological changes. In the same survey, students indicated a desire for: increased agency over how they learn in the classroom and beyond; more of a say about what they learn, through greater input into the curriculum and choice of subjects, and better teacher-student relationships. This desire is echoed in the comments from educators: that education is disconnected from students' reality, that school work is often boring, that there is too much focus on exams, and that as educators they themselves often felt disengaged. This article is the third in a series on the work being done in the area of student engagement by AITSL's Learning Frontiers unit. The article makes a case for change, introduces some research-based principles to guide the redesign of learning, and describes ways in which Australian schools are beginning to collaborate to trial highly engaging learning environments for students.