Open Educational Resources
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
UNESCO defines Links to an external site.Open Educational Resources (OER) as "teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.” While traditional instructional materials often come with restrictive copyright laws and many free, online materials do not provide copyright information, OER use open copyright licenses like Creative Commons Links to an external site.that clearly identify how you can use the resources.
What Does the "Open" in Open Educational Resources Mean?
The terms "open content" and "open educational resources" describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like "open source") that is licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the following 5R activities:
- Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage).
- 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).
- Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language).
- 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).
- 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).
This material is adapted from original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at Open Content
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Benefits of OER
- Free to students
- If you replace one or more required course textbooks with OER, you generally help reduce cost for students.
- Wide range in size
- Since OER ranges in size from a course assignment, syllabus, image, or video to full textbooks and courses, you can start small by adopting one openly licensed resource like a video or an assignment.
- Variety of available formats
- The wide variety of available OER formats (e.g., video, audio, images, texts) can help you increase the variety of ways students will interact and engage with your course content.
- Diversity of materials
- Since OER can easily be created and shared worldwide, you are more likely to find instructional materials that provide diverse voices and perspectives.
- Pedagogical benefits
- Most OER has licenses that allow you to adapt the resource (e.g., modify it by adding, updating, or removing content) which means you can customize the materials to better align with your course objectives.
Getting Started with OER
An easy way to get started with OER is to search for an existing educational resource that you can adopt and/or adapt for use in your course. A few helpful repositories and resources to help you get started with searching for OER are listed below.
Texts, Articles, and Documents
- Pressbooks Directory
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- The Pressbooks directory provides an index of 3,551 books published across 119 Pressbooks networks.
- LibreTexts
Links to an external site.
- LibreTexts has an expansive library and books are mapped to popular textbooks which makes replacing textbooks easier.
- SUNY’s Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)
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- OASIS is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier by searching multiple sources for OER and other open content at once. OASIS currently searches for open content from 79 different sources and contains approximately 330,000 records.
- George Mason OER Metafinder
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- The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) links to a wide array of open content, including open access books and articles, documents in the public domain, and OER. Because of its large breadth of resources, we recommend that you start your MOM search with only a selection of the “OER-specific sites” checked, rather than all the materials it can include.
Images
- Canvas provides built-in integration with Unsplash Links to an external site., which allows you to search for and embed free, openly-licensed images and photos directly from the Rich Content Editor in your course.
Canvas Commons
- Commons is a learning object repository built into Canvas that enables educators to find, import, and share openly-licensed resources. You may search the Commons digital library
Links to an external site. full of educational content, preview course modules, activities, and assessments, and import resources directly into your Canvas course.
- Additionally in Commons, you may access Florida CourseShare, Links to an external site.an initiative that uses Canvas Commons for sharing course materials created and donated by instructors from across the Florida State University Systems.
Content on this page is a derivative of "OER Student Toolkit" Links to an external site. by BCcampus and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Links to an external site.