Identifying Open Educational Resources (OER)OER are “open and free” for the public to use. Seems simple enough, right? Well, there can be a lot of confusion between “free” to you and the student, and “open”, meaning that copyright restrictions are not “all rights reserved”; instead, the author is granting a less limiting license.The license most often associated with OER is the Creative Commons license. It is this less restrictive licensing that copyright holders use to allow access to, and even altering of, their original work. Going back to the 5Rs of OER, we know that Creative Commons licensing enables us to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute content. Distinguishing between All Righs Reserved, and Fair Use, and Open Resources OER are “open and free” for the public to use. Seems simple enough, right? Well, there can be a lot of confusion between “free” to you and the student, and “open”, meaning that copyright restrictions are not “all rights reserved”; instead, the author is granting a less limiting license. The license most often associated with OER is the Creative Commons license.Reviewing Types of OERTypes of OER include full courses, course materials, modules, learning objects, open textbooks, openly licensed (often streamed) videos, tests, interactive multimedia elements, software, and other tools, materials, or techniques used to support teaching and learning. Any content that is available to use for teaching and learning, that has an open license, can be considered OER.Developing a Search StrategyYou can find OER by using the search engines you already use, or by searching or browsing any of the OER repositories listed [within the link above]. Note that as you explore these options, you need to come up with a search strategy that will work best for you. Search examples include course name, discipline, education level, license type, and keyword.Evaluating OERFinding OER is the easy part. Determining if the OER will work in your course takes some careful consideration. Lucky for us, there are some fantastic OER evaluation tools that can make this step much easier — from advanced rubrics that are tied to state standards, to simple checklists.Keeping Accessibility in MindOpen access implies access for all. If learning materials are not accessible for each and every student, do they fulfill the purpose of OER? Accessibility means that all students can learn from print and digital content, participate in all learning activities, and interact without hindrances. If you find OER that you are interested in using in your course(s), we encourage you to take the time to check for accessibility.Supporting OER AdoptionAfter you have found OER relevant to your course objectives and student learning outcomes, [see these] considerations for ensuring successful adoption of the open materials into your teaching practice.Additional ResourcesFeatures a downloadable list of valuable resources including Creative Commons, OER mythbusting, and a guide to copyright and fair use permissions for educators.This material comes from SUNY OER Services. The material above is extracted from "Welcome to Identifying, Finding and Adopting OER," a course created by Kerrie Wilkes and Phyilse Banner on behalf of SUNY OER Services and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
