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Introduction to OER

What are OER?

Open Educational Materials (OER) are educational materials that are openly and freely available for one's use. They can be copied, edited, and shared, but given the proper attribution according to the Creative Commons license the resource is published under. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation states on their website that “OER – freely licensed, remixable learning resources – offer a promising solution to the perennial challenge of delivering high levels of student learning at lower cost. But OER offer much more than just cost savings. We believe that well-designed, customizable, openly licensed materials can engage students and energize educators in ways that enable more responsive teaching and better learning.” For more information, please review their website hewlett.org

Published under the license CC BY 4.0 International License

OER (Open Educational Resources) Introduction II, licensed under CC BY 

What can you do with OER?

OER are neglected, but of use in educational systems. OER are great for teachers that have their lessons made but would like to creatively adapt to them or for teachers who simply want to adopt them. OER are used, reused, shared, adapted, and modified in corresponding to student's needs. When using OER, one must consider the 5R activities within the required rules of the Creative Commons in order to successfully use OER. The 5Rs are:

  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 mashup)

  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)

"The 5 R's" are taken from Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources by David Wiley and published freely under the CC BY 4.0 International License

5rs-infographic1.png

Image taken from the Ontario Tech University, licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License

What are the benefits of using and creating OER?

Teachers can benefit a lot from OER especially when they are looking to update their lessons. But teachers are not the only ones who benefit from them. There's a wide range of users that can benefit from OER. Students can benefit from OER by reducing their fees of textbooks and having access to more instructional material for extra outside-of-school learning.

The OER originator can benefit from:

  • Student/user feedback and open peer review

  • Reputational benefits, recognition

  • Benefits (efficiency and cultural) of collaborative approaches to teaching/learning

  • Opportunities to work across sectors, institutions and subject disciplines

  • Increased digital literacies (particularly around IPR)

  • Reaching a wider range of learners

Learners can benefit from:

  • Enhanced quality and flexibility of resources

  • Seeing/applying knowledge in a wider context than their course would otherwise allow, eg international dimension

  • Freedom of access (e.g. at work/home/on placement) and enhanced opportunities for learning - the Cape Town declaration)

  • Support for learner-centred, self-directed, peer-to-peer and social/informal learning approaches

  • Skills development (e.g. numeracy) through release of generic OER that can be re-used and re-contextualised in different subject areas

  • The opportunity to test out course materials before enrolling – and compare with other similar courses

Educational institutions can benefit from:

  • Recognition and enhanced reputation

  • Wider availability of their academic content and focus on the learning experience 

  • Increased capacity to support remote students

  • New partnerships/linkages with other institutions and organizations outside the education sector

  • Increased sharing of ideas and practice within the institution, including a greater role for support services

  • A buffer against the decline of specific subjects or topics (which may not be sustainable at institutional level but can be sustained across several institutions through shared resources)

  • Supporting sustainability of legacy materials

The benefits of OER are taken from the Jisc web page “stakeholders and benefits” licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons Licence (CC BY-NC-ND)

Open up your classroom with OER, licensed under CC BY

Test Your Knowledge

This module is available for use in other formats:

Assessment

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