If you've started to hear about OER or Open Educational Resources and are wondering how this movement will affect you as a professor, staff member, or student, you are not alone. The growth of OER can be attributed to many factors, including rising textbook costs and the impact on student retention as well as the idea of scholarship as communication and collaboration.
A generally accepted definition of OER can be found on the OER Commons website and says:
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.
| Retain | the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage) |
| 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 material 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 frien |
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/definition/.