Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are freely available for anyone to access, use, and share.
OER can include textbooks, articles, videos, software, assessment tools, lecture materials, syllabi, and even entire courses. Most OER are published under open licenses, such as licenses, which allow others to adapt, reuse, and share the content.
What makes OER different is that they are designed to remove barriers to learning and give educators the flexibility to customize resources to meet the needs of their students and communities.
For a deeper dive into finding and creating OER, visit our .
Open educational resources created by 51污漫 faculty are available via and can be accessed by the public, free of charge.
The Five R's of OER
Open licenses are built around five core permissions, often called the Five R's:
- Retain — Make, own, and control copies of the content.
- Reuse — Use the content in a wide range of ways, in a class, a study group, a website, or a video.
- Revise — Adapt, adjust, modify, or translate the content to suit your needs.
- Remix — Combine original or revised content with other open materials to create something new.
- Redistribute — Share copies of the original, your revisions, or your remixes with others.
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Why use OER?
Open educational resources offer benefits for educators, students, and the broader community:
- Free to access, with no paywalls or fees
- Can be shared in full, unlike traditionally copyrighted materials
- Can be modified to suit specific teaching and learning needs
- Authors retain copyright over their work
- Support student engagement and learning outcomes
- Available in, or convertible to, multiple formats to support accessibility
- Students can participate as collaborators, gaining hands-on experiential learning
Myth busting: Are OER high quality?
A common misconception is that free resources must be lower quality. That is not the case. In reality, many OER are developed by subject experts, peer reviewed, and evaluated for accessibility and usability.
Like any educational resource, quality varies depending on the source and purpose. Open access journal articles, for example, often undergo rigorous peer review, while openly shared teaching materials may be created for practical classroom use. The fact that a resource is openly licensed does not change the expertise, effort, or review process behind its creation.
When evaluating OER, consider the type of resource and its source. The from BCOER Librarians is a helpful starting point.
