Open Educational Resources: OER Essentials

Open Educational Resources are freely available, high quality educational materials that can be downloaded, edited, and shared to better serve all students. They can include any type of educational resource, from textbooks to full courses.

At the core of OER is allowing reuse: as equally important as making educational resources freely available is making them free to reuse in whatever way you would like, whether that be downloading and copying, adding to a course website, or editing and releasing a new version. The Open Education community often refers to the "5R's" when talking about OER: these are the activities you are free to do with OER.

• Retain: Download and copy
• Reuse: Use in any way, such as in a class, on a website, in a video
• Revise: Modify or adapt
• Remix: Combine original content with other material to make something new
• Redistribute: Share copies with others

What makes OER different from all the other free educational materials that can be found online? All users are allowed to copy, modify, and share OER without needing to request permission, making them different from other educational materials, which may be freely available online, but do not grant users these rights. Many of these resources can't be legally copied, and users can't update them or build upon them without specific permission from the copyright holder.

What is Not OER?

OER reduce the financial barrier to achievement in higher education for students.

• The price of college textbooks increased 88% from January 2006 to July 2016, outpacing other consumer goods in the Consumer Price Index. The average student should budget $1,240 - $1,440 for textbooks and course materials per year.
• The high cost of college textbooks continues to be a barrier for many students in achieving higher education. 65% of students report not purchasing a textbook because of its high price. This barrier disproportionately affects students of less privileged socioeconomic status.

OER improves student grades, especially for traditionally underserved students.

• Emerging research, such as a recent study on the impact of OER on student success metrics, has found that students' grades improve in courses that use OER, likely because all students can get access to the course materials, not just those who can afford it.

Students can engage with course content before, during, and after a course.

• Because OER are always free to access online, students who are interested in taking a course you teach can read up on the course ahead of time, and students who have already taken your course can be safe in the knowledge that their course materials will not evaporate at the end of the semester and that they can continue to review the materials you provided to them in future.

OER gives instructors the flexibility to modify and add content according to what they need.

• OER are by definition shared and licensed with the goal of being reused.
• Unlike traditional commercial textbooks, instructors can customize OER to their specific instructional needs.
• OER can also be updated and released at any time, without waiting for publishers to do so.

OER authors can share their work with a global audience and increase their visibility in their fields.

• OER authors benefit from the advantages of open access: increased visibility and impact.
• Releasing OER under a license that requires attribution ensures that authors will receive credit for their work.
• Authors who share their OER in repositories can track usage statistics to measure their work's impact around the globe.

OER supports culturally responsive teaching and the development of more inclusive teaching and learning materials

• Because OER can be freely adapted, they can incorporate more culturally relevant and inclusive examples, language, and other content to be responsive to individual classroom settings.

The Freel Library is ready to help you use open educational resources in your courses. We can help you:

• Find OER for a specific course or topic
• Determine copyright, licensing, and reuse rights for OER you use or create
• Identify support at MCLA for creating your own OER

Contact us