LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: What is OER?

Definition of OERs and their Importance

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are resources that are made freely available to everyone:

RETAIN: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)

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)

REVISE: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)

REMIX: the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

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)

Including these and more:

Databases
Journals
Articles
Streaming Films
eBooks
Audio
Art
Images

How do I use OERs?

Educators can use OER or Open Access materials freely in their course as long as they Attribute the authors of the material and follow the licensing agreement (such as Share Alike if required). OER materials are an important resource for educators as they allow them to alter educational material that is under Creative Commons licensing. The difference is that OERs can be altered as long as the Creative Commons license allows for this.

How are Open Access and Open Educational Resources Related?

Educators can choose which materials they want to incorporate into their courses but keep in mind:

OER by definition allows users to follow the 5Rs (above) meaning they can alter the material as needed.
Open Access are not necessarily OER material. You can access these materials but cannot necessarily alter them.

Why are OERs Important?

OERs are essential to education as they allow free access to quality educational material. They can replace conventional textbooks at no cost. But more importantly, they allow the instructor to alter the material as needed by their students.

The 17 Goals from the United Nations
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Open Education versus Open Access versus Open Source

Types of Free Online Resources
Resource Type	Definition	Modifiable?	Purpose?	Examples	How can faculty use?
Open Access	Any type of resource that is available without barriers and freely distributed online	Only with CC license	Creators wish to share their work with others in order to increase usage and access to users around the globe	streaming videos media eBooks	You can link to resource
Open Source	Source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution	Yes	Creators wish to share their work with others in order to increase usage and access to users around the globe.	Moodle Koha Firefox	You can alter code to fit your own needs
Open Educational Resources (OERs)	Text, media, and digital content that is freely available and has a Creative Commons license that allows for potential modification and redistribution	Yes, with CC license (may vary)	Resources provided by their creator to allow users the ability to alter them.	wikis eBooks eTextbooks media Assessments	Following the CC license you can alter the materials with attribution
OER Repository	A central location where online resources, such as journals, databases, media, eBooks and other resources are stored	Possibly	Provides central access to a variety of resources that are Open Educational and able to be altered.	MERLOT OER Metafinder SkillsCommons	Use this source for finding OERs
Open Pedagogy	Teaching practice that engages students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it, otherwise known as Open Educational Practices (OEPs)	Possibly	Provides an alternative teaching method that incorporates student work into a larger project such as an eBook or wiki, allowing the student to create a renewable product. These products can be used in the students' ePortfolios, in future courses by the faculty, and as resources for other students.	wikis developed by faculty and students	Use this method of instruction as an alternative to conventional practices.

Open Access Definition and their Importance

What is Open Access?

Open access (OA) refers to free, unrestricted online access to educational material, including but not limited to research outputs such as journal articles and books. OA content is open to all, with no access fees.

How are OAs related to OERs?

OA resources are not necessarily Open Education Resources. Although they are free to use, they cannot necessarily be altered. Without a Creative Commons license, the creator retains Copyright. This means that it is illegal to alter the material.

Why are OAs Important?

These resources are important for users because they allow unrestricted access to view. The TEACH Act gives extra protection and ability for those in closed courses. You can link to these resources if they are freely available online.

How do I use these Resources?

Link to these resources in courses (closed or open), on educational websites, or other places of instruction.

Use these resources if you do not plan to alter the material in any way but instead want to simply link to the online resources.

Please view the Open Access Guide on this page.

Open Access Description from Creative Commons
There’s an incredible amount of scientific research conducted at universities and institutions around the world. Historically, the findings of this research have been published in scholarly journals. However, access to this research is typically restricted–granted only to those who are granted permission via their university affiliation, or by purchasing access to individual articles. This is fundamentally problematic. . . .

Open Database

Unpaywall This link opens in a new window
Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories
OER Commons This link opens in a new window
OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners. Contains search features to find a variety of OER Resources.

Library of Congress: Open Access

PBS: The Library of Congress Opened its Catalogs to the World. Here’s Why it Matters (2017)
Imagine you wanted to find books or journal articles on a particular subject. Or find manuscripts by a particular author. Or locate serials, music or maps. You would use a library catalog that includes facts – like title, author, publication date, subject headings and genre. That information and more is stored in the treasure trove of library catalogs. It is hard to overstate how important this library catalog information is, particularly as the amount of information expands every day. With this information, scholars and librarians are able to find things in a predictable way. That’s because of the descriptive facts presented in a systematic way in catalog records. But what if you could also experiment with the data in those records to explore other kinds of research questions – like trends in subject matter, semantics in titles or patterns in the geographic source of works on a given topic? Now it is possible. The Library of Congress has made 25 million digital catalog records available for anyone to use at no charge. The free data set includes records from 1968 to 2014.

OER and Open Access Guides

Creative Commons and Copyright Resource

Librarian

Michael Wetta

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Creative Commons License

CC BY