Open Educational Resources

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OER range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation."

[UNESCO]

OER Are:

1. Cost Effective: OER save students from the escalating costs of buying textbooks (see graph).
2. Reusable: Creative Commons licensing allows OER content to be reused and adapted freely. This reusability can also save educators time in not having to start creating curricula from scratch.
3. Impactful: Use of OER is growing in universities around the world.
4. Accessible: Not only are OER free from many of the copyright restrictions placed on traditional textbooks, their presence online means that they are accessible to many students who may limited resources and not have had access to expensive print textbooks.
5. Collaborative: OER are created by a community of educators and students and are purposely licensed to encourage collaboration. OER can connect educators and students around the world to open up new networks of learning.

"5Rs image" by David Wiley, Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0