Open Educational Resources (OER) Guide

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Atkins, Brown & Hammond (2007) define Open Educational Resources (OER) this way: "OER are teaching, learning and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others."

This EdWeek video provides an introduction to OER, including a definition of OER and an introduction of some of OER's benefits and common concerns. 

David Wiley (2014) laid a foundation for OER when he developed the 5Rs of openness:

• 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)

The resources used in this guide are released under Creative Commons Licenses.

This guide was adapted by Sarah Guy from the UNCG Guide "Open Educational Resources" by Beth Bernhardt. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.