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
Image credit: Jonathasmello, Global Open Educational Resources Logo, CC BY 3.0
Why have open educational resources?
OERs provide access to all kinds of resources for the educational benefit of people from all backgrounds in our global community.
OERs allow for:
- free and legal access to high quality content
- adaptation to suit your student's situation
- the increased usage of your resource due to the removal of barriers to access
Organisations that provide guidance on OERs include:
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MERLOT IIThe Merlot community have developed a variety of services, programs, and initiatives to encourage the use of Open Educational Resources.
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Open education resource foundationAn independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides leadership, international networking and support for educators and educational institutions.
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OER CommonsOER Commons is a freely accessible online library that allows teachers and others to search and discover open educational resources (OER) and other freely available instructional materials. Resources on the site can be searched and filtered using an expanded set of descriptive data, including conditions of use.
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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