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Open educational resources (OER)

Find, create and evaluate OER materials, available to legally and freely copy, such as ebooks, images, audio, video and software. Understand copyright and Creative Commons (CC) licences.

What are open educational resources?

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are educational materials that are licensed in ways that allow us to legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.

OERs include courses, textbooks, assignments, tests, projects, software, audio, video and animation.

Source: UNESCO and Open Education Resource Foundation

Benefits of OER

OERs provide access to all kinds of resources for the educational benefit of people from all backgrounds in our global community.

OERs allow:

  • free and legal access to high quality content
  • you to customise the content to suit your students
  • increased usage of your OER due to the removal of barriers to access
  • the sharing of knowledge and expertise, while ensuring that the creator is acknowledged.

If you create an OER, you can retain ownership of your work but still allow others to use, share, and remix it.  You can assign a Creative Commons (CC) licence so that users must attribute you for your work.

 

Organisations providing OER guidance

Organisations that provide guidance on OERs include:

In this guide

  • Using, creating or sharing resources, including Creative Commons and Copyright
  • Finding open educational resources - ebooks and etextbooks, open journals, images, audio, video, software 
  • MOOCs and courses - finding MOOC platforms or open courses on particular topics

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