1 Understanding OER
Learning Objectives
This chapter will support learners in being able to:
- Define Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Describe the 5R permissions
- Identify examples of OER types
- Recognize the role open licensing plays in OER
Introductory Video: What is OER?
An introduction to Creative Commons and OER
Many open resources are licensed under a Creative Commons license. These licenses provide levels of permissions that assist users in determining what they are permitted to do with the work. Content creators can consult Creative Commons licenses that follow a “standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.”
There are four main elements or attributes of Creative Commons license:
BY – Attribution: Others can copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix the work as long as they credit the original creator.
SA – Share Alike: Derivatives (e.g. adaptations, revisions, remixes, etc.) of the original work must be shared under the same license as the original.
NC – Noncommercial: Others can copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix the work for noncommercial purposes only (i.e. they can’t make money off it).
ND – No Derivatives: Others can copy, distribute, display, or perform the work, but remixes, adaptations, revisions, etc., are not allowed.
These four elements can be combined into the six main types of Creative Commons licenses:
CC-BY (Attribution)
CC-BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike)
CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial)
CC-BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivatives)
CC-BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)
CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)
Keep in mind that not all Creative Commons licenses are suitable for OER. Creative Commons licenses with a “No Derivatives” (ND) clause do not meet the definition of an OER since they do not enable re-users to adapt, modify, revise, or customize them to suit the needs of their courses and instruction.
More information on Creative Commons licenses can be found in later sections of this book. In this chapter, we will specifically focus on OER and its definition, the 5 Rs of OER, and examples of OER types.
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
OERs are teaching and learning materials that: i) are freely accessible, ii) exist in the public domain, and iii) are published under an open license allowing users to reuse, revise, remix, retain, and redistribute them. These concepts were developed by David Wiley, a professor at Brigham Young University (Wiley, 2014), and are commonly known as 5R activities (Wiley, 2014).
The nonprofit organization Creative Commons provides the following definition of open educational resources (OER):
“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.”
OERs do not necessitate the payment of royalties or licensing fees, allowing users to reuse or adapt the content without prior permission from the copyright holder. (Olivier & Rambow, 2023).
The key distinguishing factor of this type of educational resource is the copyright status of the material. If course content is under a traditional, all-rights-reserved copyright, then it’s not an OER. If it resides in the public domain or has been licensed for adaptation and distribution, then it is an OER.
The 5 Rs of OER
You have just viewed the introductory video in which the presenters highlighted the importance of the 5Rs in defining and differentiating open educational resources (OER) from other types of learning materials. These 5R permissions are what set OER apart from materials that are protected by traditional all-rights-reserved copyright. It is essential to understand that “open” in open educational resources does not merely signify that the resources are free; rather, it is more appropriately characterized as follows:
open = free + permissions (the 5Rs)
The 5Rs
The 5Rs are a useful way to appreciate the value of OER. These permissions help you, the user of openly licensed content, understand what you are allowed to do with the work. These permissions are granted in advance and are legally established through Public Domain or Creative Commons license:
- Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
- Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
- Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
Examples of OER Stakeholder Involvement
As discussed in the video and defined above, Open Educational Resources (OER) can include a diverse range of teaching and learning materials. Examples of OER encompass, but are not limited to, syllabi, lesson plans, and learning modules, lab experiments, simulations, course videos, discussion prompts, assignments, assessments, library guides, and course design templates.
The following are several examples of how faculty, students, librarians, and instructional designers can utilize or facilitate the adoption of open educational resources.
Faculty
Many faculty already use OER in their classes — for example, showing an openly licensed course video or using worksheets created and shared by other faculty. Faculty can create and share syllabi, lesson plans, and even entire textbooks for their courses. They can collaborate with faculty at their own institutions, or other institutions around the world. They can access and remix existing OER and re-publish them to share with others.
Students
Students can play a significant role in creating and improving OER ─ from simple assignments to full textbooks. One example from Plymouth State University includes students working together to find public-domain materials, write topic introductions, craft discussion forum prompts, and create assignments to go along with the materials to create a full OER textbook. The result became The Open Anthology of Early American Literature.
Librarians
Librarians play a key role in OER initiatives by advocating for, developing, exploring, and managing OER. Along with helping you find OER, librarians can help you better understand copyright and licensing concepts, and guide you through your Creative Commons licensing options if you choose to create materials yourself. You will explore this further in Chapter Four, Finding OER.
Instructional Designers
Instructional Designers can work with faculty and students to integrate OER into teaching and learning and also share and publish their course design templates as OER. Many instructional designers and technologists work with librarians and IT services to help integrate OER into learning management systems such as Blackboard, Canvas, and Brightspace.
Review of Open Licensing & OER
In reference to our definition, it is essential to acknowledge that OERs exist in the public domain or have been made available under an intellectual property license that allows for their free use and repurposing by others.
The most commonly used intellectual property license for OER that permits free use and re-purposing is called Creative Commons Licensing. Creative Commons licenses work with legal definitions of copyright to automatically provide usage rights pertaining to that work.
Chapter 4 titled “Finding OER” and Chapter 8 titled “Creative Commons Licensing In-Depth” will provide you with the opportunity to fully explore Creative Commons licensing and to learn how to apply the appropriate licenses to the OER you and your learners create and use.
A (Very) Brief History of Open Educational Resources
- 1994 – Wayne Hodgins coined the term “learning object”
- 1994 – The National Science Foundation provided a grant to California State University to identify and provide access to primarily free online curriculum materials for higher education
- 1997 – Creation of the first OER repository, Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT)
- 1998 – David Wiley coined the phrase “open content”
- 1999 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched Open Course Ware to share learning materials with anyone who could subsequently change, modify, or redistribute the material
- 2001 – Larry Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons
- 2001 – MIT introduced their OpenCourseWare project (MOOCs)
- 2002 – UNESCO coined the term “Open Educational Resources” (OER).
- 2006 – Khan Academy is created
- 2012 – UNESCO adopted the 2012 OER Paris Declaration, an international commitment to OER
- 2019 – UNESCO updates their definition of OER, creating conversation within the open community about the impact of this change on the ability to reuse OER
This movement is maintaining its momentum, and the community of open education practitioners is consistently growing. Educators globally are increasingly utilizing and developing these resources in their teaching and learning processes.
Concept Review
To complete the Module 1 Final Activity (the first step in earning OCO’s OER 101 badge), return to OER 101 Module 1.
Explore Further
Want to learn more about the history of OER?
Bliss, T. J. and Smith, M. (2017). A Brief History of Open Educational Resources. In: Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-Diener, R. (eds.) Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. (pp. 9–27). London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.b.
EBSCO (2019). The History and Future of Open Educational Resources in Academic Libraries. https://www.ebsco.com/blogs/ebscopost/history-and-future-open-educational-resources-academic-libraries
Olivier, J., & Rambow, A. (2023). Open educational resources in higher education : a global perspective (J. Olivier & A. Rambow, Eds.; 1st ed. 2023.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8590-4
Wiley, D. (2014). The access compromise and the 5th R. Creative commons, Open content, Open education Textbooks. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221
Wiley, D. (2020, January 16). Clarifying and Strengthening the 5Rs. Iterating Towards Openness: Pragmatism Before Zeal. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/6271