so what exactly are OERs…
The term “Open Educational Resource(s)” (OER) refers to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing.
- from the OER handbook
more specifically, OERs are…
largely digital stuff (music, images, words, animations) created by somebody who has attached an open license to it… in other words, the content is:
- openly available: it can readily be found or discovered
- openly accessible: it is in a form in which others can take it away
- openly reusable: the user can easily modify it and is allowed under the license to do certain things with it without having to ask the creator’s permission first.
This is in contrast to full-rights-reserved copyright, where reuse is always closed to users unless they seek and are granted permission, and where rights holders normally restrict the content’s availability and accessibility in many different ways to avoid illegal use of the material.
- adapted from Who Puts the Education into Open Educational Content? by Andy Lane
