Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Open Educational Resources Introduction

The 5 Rs of Open Resources

Open content is licensed in a way that grants users the permission to:

Retain: Make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
Reuse: 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: Adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content (e.g., translate the content into another language)
Remix: Combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
Redistribute: Share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., post a copy of the content online for others to download)

This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources.

OER Definition

From the California Education Code, College Textbook Affordability Act of 2015:

"'Open Educational Resources' are high-quality teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license, such as a Creative Commons license, that permits their free use and repurposing by others, and may include other resources that are legally available and free of cost to students. 'Open educational resources' include, but are not limited to, full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, faculty-created content, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."

Published OER Research

The Open Education Group is an interdisciplinary research group that conducts original, rigorous, empirical research on the impact of OER adoption, as well as designing methodological and conceptual frameworks for studying the impact of OER adoption.

For further reading on OER, please see the Open Education Group's list of OER publications by members as well as the list of publications from Open Education's OER Research Fellows.

Open Educational Resources: A Brief Explanation (video)

"Open Education Resources: A Brief Explanation" from Brandeis University is licensed BY CC.

A Review of the Effectiveness of OER (video)

Video by Research Shorts licensed BY CC