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Faculty Services: Open Educational Resources

This guide lists faculty support services.

What is OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are resources that anyone can freely access, remix, and distribute. You can edit and use OER in your classes without having to worry about licensing or cost. OER can include: textbooks, textbook chapters, and homework platforms.

Some benefits of OER:

  1. Intellectual freedom - You have complete control of the content in your class, and you can edit and combine any resources.
  2. Student costs - OER are free for students to use and access.
  3. Timeliness - OER are usually online materials, and they can be updated much more quickly than traditionally published textbooks.
  4. Accuracy - OER are often produced as collaborations between multiple experts. OER can be edited easily by authors to correct information.
  5. Community - Many OER sharing platforms include discussion sections or places to discuss possible corrections.

For more information, please view our Open Educational Resources LibGuide.

Places to Find OER

Licensing

Most OER you see will have a Creative Commons license attached. Creative Commons licenses are "additions" to the standard copyright coverage the item already has. Creative Commons licenses describe the "exceptions" the copyright holder has preapproved for that item.

In OER's strictest definition, only the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) and Public Domain Dedication (CC0) licenses should be used, but many items are described as "OER" while using different Creative Commons licenses.

The No Derivatives (ND) option is especially restrictive for OER because it disallows adaptations of materials.

All Creative Commons licenses are listed below. It is always good to check licenses before using, distributing, or editing an item.