Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be textbooks, full courses, lesson plans, videos, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge. —SPARC Open Education Fact Sheet (pdf)

Open = Free + Permissions

The 5 Permissions of OER

• Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content

• 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 open content 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)

—Created by Lumen Learning and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.