Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources released under a license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be full courses, course materials, lesson plans, open textbooks, learning objects, videos, games, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge (SPARC). They are either in the public domain, or published with a Creative Commons license that legally enables users to freely engage in the "5 Rs":
Open Educational Resources (OER) are "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others" (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation).
Below is a graph showing the educational expensive for books and need for alternatives like OER.
If a resource is not free, or openly licensed, it is not an OER. For example, students can download a PDF of an article from the library - but journal and database subscriptions are not free-to-access, and may be cancelled if the library faces budget cuts. Even if materials are accessible, they do not inherently grant users permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix, or redistribute. As Abbey K. Elder shares in the OER Starter Kit, there are some fundamental differences between OERs, and materials commonly thought of as OERs:
Material Type | Openly licensed | Free | Modifiable |
---|---|---|---|
Open Educational Resources | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Free online resources, under "all rights reserved" copyright | No | Yes | No |
Materials paid for by the library | No | Yes | No |
Open Access articles and other resources | Yes | Yes | Maybe |
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free or low-cost educational materials that are in the public domain or have been made available with an open license. Creators and users are free to retain rights, reuse content, remix content, revise content, or redistribute content.
OER are typically digital, and can include but are not limited to textbooks, articles, journals, lectures, course packs, quizzes, streaming videos, tests, audio, or images. Most material is licensed under Creative Commons.
“5R Permissions of OER” by Lumen Learning “ https://lumenlearning.com/about/whats-oer/