What are Open Educational Resources and Open Textbooks?
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are materials that are free for anyone to use, copy, adapt, share, and combine.
They can include typical learning materials such as readings, quizzes, study guides, and slides, as well as entire course shells and syllabi. OER are openly licensed, meaning that they do not require access codes and can be shared freely with students without violating copyright.
Open Textbooks are textbooks licensed for anyone to use and adapt at no cost.
The price of traditionally-published textbooks has risen exponentially in recent decades, making open textbooks a key tool for promoting equity and inclusion in higher education (Nusbaum et al., 2020).
Open textbooks are available without backorders or access codes and can be integrated directly into D2L. They offer faculty greater freedom in their courses because individual instructors can incorporate parts of multiple open textbooks and adapt and update OERs without any additional cost and without violating copyright. Many open textbooks also come with ancillary materials, such as online quizzes and lesson plans.
Nusbaum, A.T., Cuttler, C. and Swindell, S. (2020). Open Educational Resources as a tool for educational equity: Evidence from an introductory psychology class. Frontiers in Education, 4, 152. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2019.00152
How do I tell if a material is OER?
OER are labeled with licenses that give users permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the material. Some open content is in the public domain, meaning that copyright does not apply.
The most popular licenses for OER are Creative Commons (CC) licenses. The CC Licenses that label a resource as OER are:
Click on each license type to learn more about what permissions the license grants the user.
If you see an educational resource with any of these licenses, you know it is an OER.
Adapted from "Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources" by David Wiley, CC BY 4.0