As defined by UNESCO, OER are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.
Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.
Read more about the specific Creative Commons licenses that allow for this below under the "Creative Commons (CC)" heading
If you are using an OER for a course you can report it to the Bookstore the following way:
An example of what this would look like to a bookstore user:
Why report OER use in this way?
Reporting OER use to the bookstore will help connect your students to their required materials easily & will ensure they have what is required before classes start.
OER are not just materials that are openly available.They are licensed under specific Creative Commons (CC) licenses that allow for two key components:
1. Remixing of materials
2. Reuse of materials
This means you can edit OER to fit your course and share them. This OER Commons webpage has examples of specific CC licenses that utilize these features. You can read more in the "Remix and Share" subheading of the webpage.
Remixing, redistributing, or making derivatives works comes with some restrictions, including how it is shared. Includes Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA), Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA), Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), WGBH Teachers' Domain remix.
Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
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Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
View License Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
