Skip to Main Content

Open Educational Resources for Faculty: Introduction

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials freely available for instructors and students to use, adapt, share, and reuse.

About

Definition

UNESCO defines Open Educational Resources (OER) as “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." 

Key to this definition is that OER are educational materials ("teaching, learning, and research materials") that are free ("no-cost') for anyone to use and change ("access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions"), which can be done because they are made open ("reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license"). 

Overview of OER

"An Introduction to Open Educational Resources" by Abbey Elder is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International license.

Instructional Librarian