LibGuides: Open Educational Resources (OERs): Welcome!

Getting Started with OER

A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources
Prepared by Neil Butcher for the Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO
7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources
Published by EDUCAUSE (June 2010)
Open Education Fact Sheet
Published by SPARC.

What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)?

"Open Educational Resources (OERs) 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. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation." (UNESCO)

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"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation)

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"Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared." (OER Commons)

“The OERs: Open Educational Resources” by intheacademia is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“Why OER?” by The Council of Chief State School Officers is licensed under CC BY 4.0

OER Advocacy

Open Education Consortium
A "worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing open education and its impact on global education."
SPARC: Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
"SPARC is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communications."
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
One of the first institutions to invest in Open Educational Resources and their development. Grants are available through the foundation as a means to "[support] mainstream adoption and effective use of openly licensed educational resources that provide students around the world greater access to a world class education."
UNESCO: Open Educational Resources
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) works on a global level to promote OER and is currently "developing a new, innovative OER Platform which will offer selected UNESCO publications as OERs and allow communities of practice including teachers, learners, and education professionals to freely copy, adapt, and share their resources."
OER Commons
OER Commons is "a dynamic digital library and network" for OER and its users. OER Commons also provides professional development and training opportunities to those interested through consultation, webinars, fellowships, and conferences.
NCPIRG Students
Student organization that works on public interest problems, including higher education issues such as textbook affordability.
WikiEducator
The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative: planning of education projects linked with the development of free content
development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs networking on funding proposals developed as free content

Attribution

This guide was originally published by Rachel Statham during her time as Librarian at Lenoir-Rhyne's Center for Graduate Studies of Asheville under a CC BY 4.0 license. Some elements have been borrowed with attribution given--please be aware of the content's original creator and credit properly.