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License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed) Attribution: What is OER? The Council of Chief State School Officers
What is OER
David Wiley one of the pioneers of OER helped coin the terms we refer to as the 5R’s of OER. The following table helps explain the concept of Open.
License: CC0
Defining the “Open” in Open Content
and Open Educational Resources
Open educational resources (OER) 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 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 was created by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.
Learning Objectives
- Define Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Explain the history of OER
- Discuss what is being done with OER today
- Compare and contrast research findings from OER vs Traditional Textbooks
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) provides the following definition of Open Educational Resources (OER).
“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere. Open permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials.”
License: CC0.
The Hewlett Foundation, is one of the first institutions to invest in the field, at a time when MIT’s Open Courseware initiative and Creative Commons were in their infancy. They are one of the greatest charitable contributors to the OER movement. They tell us that, “OER includes full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”
Creative Commons
Creative Commons helps legally share knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. They unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, gro