Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, adaptation and redistribution by others. [1]

OERs are specifically designed by their author/s to be openly available, and are often licensed to be re-used, re-mixed, and re-distributed. Open is not just about low cost, but about the ability to create customized course materials or to take what others have created, customize it for your specific educational needs, and then share your creation with others.  

OERs formats

Open educational resources can be in a variety of formats, including:

• Learning content - Created content that ranges from individual lectures, animations, and assessments to complete courses and textbooks.  
• Primary sources - Images, video, and sound recordings.  Some  sources are in the public domain, while others have been licensed as open by their creators. 

Five Rs of OER

The Open Education movement is built around the 5Rs of Open: [2]

1. Reuse -  the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
2. Redistribute -  the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
3. Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
4. Remix -  the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
5. Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g. download, duplicate, store, and manage)

Below is a short video explaining the reasoning behind using OER in your classroom.

OER Global Logo by Jonathas Mello (link is external) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Unported 3.0 License

Parts of this guide are a re-mixed and customized version of a guide created by Kim Read from Concordia University. All original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.