Open Educational Resources - OER

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license, such as a Creative Commons License or GNU General Public License, that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

The 5R Permissions of OER

The “5 Rs” is a framework that encourages educators to capitalize on the unique rights associated with open content. These rights include the ability to:

1. Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
2. 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)
3. Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
4. Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mash-up)
5. 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)

Definition of OER is from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The 5Rs of OER was created by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.