What is an OER?

Foundation Skills
Introduction to open education resources and practices
Open Education Resources (OER) and Open Education Practices (OEP)	Objectives  |  What is an open education resource (OER)?  |  Open education practices (OEP)  |  e-Activity  |  Summary
StudyDesk

What is an open education resource (OER)?

Please explore this information to develop your understanding about Open Education Resources.

• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines an Open Education Resource (OER) as:

"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution."

Information about open licensing is explained further on.

Activity

Andrew Coyle explains his view of an Open Education Resource (OER). After watching the video, please make a list of five OERs that you have used in your teaching and learning during the last year. Outline how you used them, and reflect on the response of students, and how well they supported your teaching practice.

Where can you find OERs?

• David Wiley explains in his video: Open Education Week: Finding Open Educational Resources.

• OER Commons - allows you to search for OERs by Topic, such as Education or Natural Sciences. You are advised to explore this search engine to gain a sense of the variety and volume of OERs available.

• Additional OER databases and search engines are available on the OpenSource.com website.
• Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand website.
• search Creative Commons - images and music.

• Of course, you are probably familiar with YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, which are also rich OER sources of: images, videos and slide presentations.

Extra resources

A guide to open education resources archived by the UK-based Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand (CCANZ) provides guidance on intellectual property licensing for those wishing to use and/or create OERs. There are currently six different Creative Commons licences - these are all explained on the CCANZ website on their Licences explained page:

• Attribution
• Attribution - Noncommercial
• Attribution - Sharealike
• Attribution - Noncommercial - Sharealike
• Attribution - No Derivatives
• Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivatives

If you wish, you may also download from the CCANZ website a one-pager explaining the six different Creative Commons licences.