Digital skills for collaborative OER development/Digital skills/Choose your license

Choose your Creative Commons license
Searching for open access and OER materials for reuse and adaptation in course development is not as simple as finding materials which are published with a Creative Commons license. There are a number of considerations.

We recommend that course developers decide which license they would prefer to use for release of their OER courses before searching for content to reuse and remix. This will simplify your search for resources. Remember that the legal requirements of some Creative Commons licenses may:


 * Necessitate the use of a different license from the preferred license chosen by the author. For example, an author wanting to publish their course under a CC BY license would need to change to a CC BY-SA license if any CC BY-SA materials are included in the remix.
 * Not be compatible with the licensing requirements of community hosted sites. For example, an author choosing to publish course materials under a CC BY-SA license on WikiEducator would not be able to incorporate CC BY-NC-SA materials.

When developing on WikiEducator, you may only use content licensed under a CC BY or CC BY-SA license or resources which are dedicated to the public domain. Consequently when searching for OER materials for reuse and adaptation, your search should be restricted to CC BY or CC BY-SA materials.

The taster quiz below illustrates additional considerations and highlights a few of the complexities associated with remix.

Remember, if you are not sure what resources can be legally remixed with each other, consult this summary. In the case of WikiEducator, it's easy: You may only use CC BY or CC BY-SA licensed materials.