Viking Open Educational Resource Research Guide: About OER

What are open educational resources?

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are in the public domain or have been released with an open license (often a Creative Commons license). Anyone can freely use, copy, adapt, and reshare OER.  

They encompass textbooks, full courses, syllabi, test questions, lecture notes, assignments, software, videos, lab notes, games, and more.

1. Retain: make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and 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)

OER include digital learning materials such as:

• open textbooks
• full courses
• modules
• syllabi
• lectures
• homework assignments
• quizzes
• lab activities
• games
• simulations

Lee Douglas - Vice President of Academic Affairs

Leslie Forehand - Open Educational Resource (OER) Faculty Coordinator

In the spirit of OER, the pages Open Textbooks, OER Repositories, and Open Courseware Resources are a re-mixed version of a guide page created by Jen Klaudinyi from Portland Community College. All original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All linked-to content adheres to its respective license.