What are Open Educational Resources (OER)
“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. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” -William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
- Open educational resources, or OER, are openly licensed materials created by instructors like you on a range of disciplines and subjects. Unlike traditionally published materials with strict copyrights, OER are published on the web and are designed and licensed for others to edit and reuse them.
- The idea behind OER is that education is about sharing and building on the ideas of others. You don’t always need to reinvent the wheel or stick with whatever a publisher makes available. OER allow you to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute a variety of course materials (see "The 5 R's of OER" section for more information).
- OER might be textbooks, worksheets, assignments, tests, presentations, simulations, or even full courses. And unlike copyrighted content, you can take these materials and keep or change as much or as little as you want.