Open Educational Resources (OER) are resources that are made available by their creator for others to use to support learning. OER are defined by UNESCO as:

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. (UNESCO)

An even simpler definition is provided by BCcampus:

teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by their creator, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them. (BCcampus, CC BY)

So what does this mean in practice? Upon creation, all original works of authorship — including educational resources — are subject to copyright. In order to reuse or adapt a resource, permission from the copyright holder must be sought. To avoid this step, and to facilitate wider sharing and use, a creator can add an open licence to any resource to make it an open educational resource or OER.

The use of an open licence, such as a Creative Commons licence, clarifies to educators, students and others how the resource may be reused. From simply correcting typos or grammatical errors to more involved activities such as translating into another language, updating the content for local contexts (disciplinary, institutional or geographic) or adding up-to-date research or examples, sharing a resource as OER allows others to adapt and use the materials as they wish.

In the case of a specific OER, the creator retains all rights that apply under the relevant copyright law, but the open licence communicates to users the specific terms under which they may adapt and reuse the resource. Thus, OER are more than simply free resources; they can be thought of as free resources with permissions. David Wiley describes these permissions as “the 5 Rs”.

The 5Rs of OER

Retain – make, own, and control a copy of the resource (e.g. download and keep your own copy)
Revise – edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource (e.g. translate into another language)
Remix – combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new (e.g. make a mashup or a collection)
Reuse – use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly (e.g. on a website, in a presentation, in a class)
Redistribute – share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others (e.g. post a copy online or give one to a friend)

(Adaptation of Defining the “Open” in Open Content and OER, originally written by David Wiley, CC BY http://opencontent.org/definition)

Examples of OER

OER can include anything from an openly-licensed course or open textbook to individual openly-licensed images, assignments, rubrics, lesson plans, guides, datasets, articles, blog posts, reflections, etc. OER can be produced in any media: text, image, video, audio, or any combination of these. And perhaps most importantly, OER can be created by anyone: teachers, learners, librarians, instructional designers, educational developers, photographers, artists, or anyone.

Later in this module we will look at how to find OER.

What is/is not an OER?

One simple way to determine what is and is not an OER is to see whether or not the resource in question has an open licence.

Any educational resource that has an open licence is an OER
Any educational resource that is only available under copyright is not an OER

There is sometimes confusion, however, about the difference between free and open. For example, if you find a resource such as an image in an online search, can that be reused in your course, assignment, blog post, etc.? This helpful table from the OER Starter Kit (Elder & Katz, 2020, CC BY) summarizes the different permissions available with openly licensed vs. freely available resources:


Material Type	Openly Licensed	Freely Available	Modifiable
Open educational resources (OER)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Free online resources (under all rights reserved copyright)	No	Yes	No
Materials available through an institution library	No	Yes	No
Open access articles and monographs	Yes	Yes	Maybe (depends on terms of licence)

This page was adapted from "Using OER and OEP for Teaching and Learning" from the National Forum For The Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education under a CC-BY license