Open Educational Resources

One of the most widely used definitions of OER for education comes from UNESCO,

“Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video, and animation.”

This definition brings up very important distinctions in the open world, “license” and “adapt and “re-share.” This is what sets OER apart from freely available content you might find online. The content which is freely available online cannot be edited or changed to meet student needs because it is fully copyrighted and making changes to it is illegal. Additionally, content may disappear tomorrow, the link may break, or it may suddenly require a paywall.

The “open” in open educational resources refers to permissions. The most common way to talk about the activities you have permission to engage in with regard to OER is the 5Rs framework. “Open” in the context of open educational resources means that you have permission to engage in the 5R activities.

Permission to engage in the 5R activities is normally granted by means of a Creative Commons license. Resources whose copyright has expired (or that were never protected by copyright) are also OER because you have permission to engage in the 5R activities with those resources, too.

More importantly, the permission to engage in the 5R activities lasts for as long as copyright lasts, cannot be taken away, and is granted to you for free. Because you have permission to make copies of OER and share those copies with others, there will always be copies of OER content freely available.

Adapted from the work by David Wiley