What Are Open Educational Resources?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are:
- Created by college and university professors
- Digital in a majority of cases
- Free to access and use
- Free to copy, share, adapt and modify, with few or no copyright restrictions (under an open licence or released to the public domain)
The last characteristic mentioned above is what differentiates OER from most copyrighted works on the Internet. There are many types of OER such as open textbooks, videos, lesson plans, interactive exercises, and tutorials.
Getting Started on OER
If you are a faculty who is new to using OER or would like to learn more about the process of finding and adopting OER, check out the "Getting Started on OER" workflow. The workflow recommends steps and considerations based on OER best practices of post-secondary institutions. However, it is not intended to be prescriptive. It also does not answer all the questions faculty may encounter with OER. Please reach out to your liaison librarian for more support.
