Skip to Main Content

Open Educational Resources (OERs): Home

What are OERs

OER

Open Educational Resources are 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.
Source: The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

THEC Information Systems Group Video Channel. (2022, September 21). OER 101. YouTube. CC BY 3.0 License.

The 5 R's

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 either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities:

  1. Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
  2. 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)
  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. 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)
    Source: OpenContent.org

What is "Public Domain"

The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.

There are four common ways that works arrive in the public domain:

  • the copyright has expired
  • the copyright owner failed to follow copyright renewal rules
  • the copyright owner deliberately places it in the public domain, known as “dedication,” or
  • copyright law does not protect this type of work.

Basically, most things created before 1923 usually qualify.

Source: Copyright & Fair Use: Stanford University Libraries

Licensed "Open" Resources

Many resources such as OERs are made and intentionally licensed as open. Usually this is using the Creative Commons License.

Creative Commons Explained

Lower the cost of Textbooks

The goal of using OERs is to lower the textbook/materials cost for students. OERs don't have to totally replace the textbook but they can.

Free the Text Book

Creative Commons

Wikimedia Foundation. (2017, February 7). What is Creative Commons? YouTube. CC BY-SA 3.0 License.