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Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources are educational materials that are free and open for anyone to use. This guide is for faculty, staff, and students interested in learning more about how to incorporate OER into their teaching and learning.

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Access (OA) is the "free, immediate, online" availability and use of research articles and other materials. 

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational "resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment." OERs that are not in the public domain are generally licensed with Creative Commons licenses, which allow users to engage in some combination of the "5R Activities:"

  • Retain - make, own, and control a copy of the resource (e.g., download and keep your own copy)
  • Revise - edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource (e.g., translate into another language)
  • Remix - combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new (e.g., make a mashup)
  • Reuse - use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly (e.g., on a website, in a presentation, in a class)
  • Redistribute - share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others (e.g., post a copy online or give one to a friend)

OER include textbooks, lesson plans, syllabi, assignments, presentations, and any other learning material that students and teachers can use, customize, and share. 

Creative Commons

Most OER are either in the public domain or licensed under Creative Commons. Creative Commons has several licenses, each with varying degrees of openness: 

 

CC BY License

Attribution/CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

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CC BY SA License

Attribution/ShareAlike/CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to "copyleft" free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects. 

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Attribution-NoDerivs/CC BY-ND

 

This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.

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Attribution-NonCommercial/CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

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CC BY SA License

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike/CC-BY-NC-SA

 

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

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CC BY NC ND License

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs/CC BY-NC-ND

 

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

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Public Domain

Creative Commons also provides tools that work in the “all rights granted” space of the public domain, including their CC0 tool, which allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and their Public Domain Mark, which allows any web user to “mark” a work as being in the public domain.