Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) are public or openly licensed educational materials for teaching and learning that anyone may freely retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. From textbooks to assignments to media, OER offer students and instructors new and familiar ways to interact with and contribute to scholarship without the costs or copyright restrictions of traditional materials.
In addition to dramatic student savings, OER adoption is also linked with student success outcomes.
To schedule a consultation to explore the prospects of OER for your discipline and teaching practice, contact either Donald Williams, Copyright & Scholarly Communications Manager, at dgwilliams3@bsu.edu, or Laura Suman, Head of Access Services, at lsuman@bsu.edu.
Suggested Starting Points
These resources are broad, interdisciplinary starting points for locating OER in diverse subjects at various educational levels.
- OER CommonsOER Commons is a referatory with a wealth of material across a range of subjects. Users can modify the scope to identify specific resource types (textbooks, assignments, diagrams, etc.) tailored to their specific educational audience (lower division, graduate, etc.). OER Commons also has functionality to assist users in submitting their own OER.
- OpenStaxOpenStax is a collection of peer-reviewed OER textbooks. These include additional supplementary materials like end-of-chapter quizzes and powerpoint slides.
- MIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWare contains entire OER courses in a variety of disciplines. They contain all the elements needed to build a course, from syllabi to readings to calendars and assignments.
- MERLOTThe MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners, and researchers.
Creative Commons Licensing
Much of the OER content online is licensed through Creative Commons licenses. These allow creators to specify what uses are permitted while retaining copyright to their work. It is important to remember that OER not only allow users to download and distribute content, but to remix and adapt it as well, which is incompatible with "no derivative" licenses.
BY = User must credit the original creator.
NC, Non-Commercial = User may not use the original product for commercial use, including fundraising.
ND, No Derivatives = User may download and distribute the product, but may not alter it.
SA, Share-Alike = Any product building on the creator's original must carry an equivalent license to the original.
Graphic by Shaddim; original CC license symbols by Creative Commons. Link here.
