Open Educational Resources (OERs)

"OERs are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property licence that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational 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

Too often faculty create learning materials for courses that have already been developed elsewhere to an excellent standard. By utilizing a number of OER repositories, faculty can spend more time designing an affective learning experience instead of creating new resources.
If you choose to upload your resources and make them available to the public then you are helping to develop an OER. By sharing content publically, you are given recognition for your work by peers and colleagues at other institutions. Metadata is embedded in the OER resources that will identify you as the author, and creative commons licencing requires proper attribution.

Key Points & suggestions:

1. Spend more time designing learning rather than creating content. (You don’t have to recreate the wheel).
2. Get recognition for your own materials development by sharing them.
3. Engage in a community of sharing and generosity.
4. Collaborate with colleagues to co-create OER materials.
5. Embed the use of OER as part of your module/course review process.

A derivative of the original work: A staff guide to Open Educational Resources. Leeds: Leeds Metropolitan University, 2011, from http://repository.leedsmet.ac.uk/

 

By using OER material faculty can provide a wider range of resources and materials than they would if they created all of the content themselves.
We are all aware that students have a range of learning styles and yet quite often we only have a limited range of teaching styles. By using resources that have been released through an OER, you are able to expand the range of learning styles you can reach. The diverse tools that are available will appeal to a variety of learning styles and will increase the chances of making the content accessible and valuable to all students.

Key Points:

1. Engage a wider range of learners by accessing a wider range of resources.
2. Spend more time on improving the learning experience through curriculum design (rather than content creation).
3. Provide access to resources that you wouldn’t be able to offer without OER.
4. Improve our chances of meeting the needs of a variety of learners including students with disabilities and foreign students.
5. Adding new resources is engaging for both student and professor.

A derivative of the original work: A staff guide to Open Educational Resources. Leeds: Leeds Metropolitan University, 2011, from http://repository.leedsmet.ac.uk/

 

Open educational resources are developed with a sense of sharing and generosity. This philosophy builds communities of like-minded people. The community helps to encourage users to create OER material as well as utilize them.

We have profiled a number of popular OERs on this site. Profiles include an indication as to the amount of content available, the subjects addressed by the OER, and copyright information. There are a number of other OERs available as well, however, it is highly recommended that you look into the copyright/attribution associated with the content before you start using it.

Key Points:

1. Although OER are free, be mindful of the licence under which they have been released. Most importantly, be sure to provide attribution to the original authors.
2. Many OERs allow for modification and repurposing.
3. It can sometimes take a while to find suitable materials, but experience has shown that the time spent finding a resource is usually less than it would take to develop it.
4. Do leave comments, rate content or contact authors of materials if their contact details are available - it’s nice to know others have found value in your work.

A derivative of the original work: A staff guide to Open Educational Resources. Leeds: Leeds Metropolitan University, 2011, from http://repository.leedsmet.ac.uk/

 

Open Educational content is available in many different formats. Journal articles, pictures, videos, course modules, books etc. can be found on OERs. Many OERs will even let you search by content format.

This site also profiles a number of OERs that index Open Textbooks. Textbooks can be used as is, or, if licencing allows, can be remixed, changed, updated or combined with other materials to create a textbook even more relevant to your course.

Individuals who share content can decide how they want to share the resource. Although different terminology is often used, the two main ways content is shared is with a reusable or a re-mixable licence.

Reusable content can be downloaded and used in a number of different ways, so long as the original content remains intact and the proper attribution is given.

Re-mixable content can be used as-is, or it can be changed, updated combined etc. as you require. Once again, the proper attribution should be given.

With some specific exceptions, one common element of all open content is the requirement to provide attribution. Traditionally, attribution has been given through citations and bibliographies; however, the nature of open resources and how they are used can present some challenges in using traditional citation methods.

Creative Commons provides some best practices on attribution here.

Many OERs use Creative Commons licencing. Understanding Creative Commons terms and symbols can make it much easier to find content that fits your purposes.

	Attribution CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

	Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

	Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

	Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

All licencing information is provided by Creative Commons