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Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are open licensed documents and textbooks that are useful for distance learning, teaching, and research purposes.

About This Guide

The purpose of this guide is to define the topic of Open Educational Resources (OER) and inform students, faculty, and our community of the many types of resources and search methods available to facilitate study, be it scholarly research or personal interest.

Use the navigation tabs to explore resources on this subject. Please contact me for further assistance.

Alexander Rodriguez
Open Education Coordinator

Introduction

Open Educational Resources (OERs) can be defined as "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. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." [1]

David Wiley [2] states that the framework of OERs is based on the five Rs of Openness:

The 5Rs of Openness

  • Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
  • 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 open content 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)