Learning Commons

What is an Open Educational Resource?

An Open Education Resource (OER) is a teaching resource that can be used and reused freely for educational purposes because the author(s) have freely released the work to the public for that purpose - usually using one of the six types of a Creative Commons licence.

 "The 5 Rs".

In order for a resource to qualify as an Open Educational Resource, users should be able to

• 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 itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix – combine the original or revised content with other open content 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., give a copy of the content to a friend)
• Retain – make, own, and control copies of the content
  
  (This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221)

Open Access Educational Resources come in many forms, from images and media files that can be used in teaching to presentations, lecture notes, assignments, and free textbooks. This guide provides a list of high quality sources of Open Access Educational Resources organized by format. All of these OERs can be used freely for non-commercial purposes usually only with the condition that you cite or attribute the work. 

"Open Access Explained" credited to Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics) Video licenced under a Youtube Creative Commons licence.

Video from teachonline.ca by http://contactnorth.ca is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.