About OER

OER logo"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation


According to opencontent.org, to be considered "open," educational resources must be free and give users the freedom to do the 5 R's:

  1. Retain: make, own and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, manage)
  2. Reuse: use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
  3. Revise: adapt, adjust, modify or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  4. Remix: combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
  5. Redistribute: share copies of the original content, your revisions or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.

Back to Top