Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources (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 education 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." --The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

In short, OER are any materials you can use in your teaching and learning that the authors have designated open for free public use.

The Five Rs

To be considered a "true" open resource, an OER must be released with a license that allows users to interact with the material in five ways - what we call the Five Rs. 

OER allow users to:

• Retain -- users have the right to make, archive, and own copies of the content
• Reuse -- content can be reused in its unaltered form
• Revise -- content can be adapted, adjusted, modified, and altered
• Remix -- original or revised content can be combined with other content to create something new
• Redistribute -- copies of the content can be shared with others in its original, revised or remixed form.

Read more about OER: