Open Education
What Are Open Educational Resources?
OER Global Logo by Jonathas Mello is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0).
Open Education Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by the copyright holder, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them.
OER are teaching resources that have an open-copyright licence (such as one from Creative Commons), or they are part of the public domain and have no copyright. Depending on the licence used, OER can be freely accessed, used, re-mixed, improved, and shared" (BC Campus).
Some examples of OER include:
- open textbooks
- full courses
- modules
- syllabi
- lectures
- homework assignments
- quizzes
- lab activities
- games
- simulations
The OER's
The 5 R's of OER
Benefits of OER
There are many advantages to using OER. These include:
- Immediate, no-cost access to learning materials. Students save money and can engage with coursework from day one through the end of the course and beyond.
- Adaptability to fit course needs. Because instructors can revise and remix at will, they can ensure that their course materials cover the required topics in a way that is tailored for and representative of their students.
- Accessibility to meet student learning accommodations. Because OER can be revised and remixed, there are no copyright-based restrictions on reformatting materials.
- Independence from commercial publisher and distributor constraints. Instructors and students can avoid the promotion of unnecessary new editions of textbooks.
According to BC Campus, since 2012, Students in British Columbia have saved over $40 million by using open textbooks.
