Overview: Open Educational Resources (OER)

Overview

As an introduction to open educational resources (OER), please watch this brief video (2:09 minutes) Links to an external site.:

 

OER: Toward A Definition

The creation and use of open educational resources (OER) have increased in popularity over the past decade, but the recent announcement that the U.S. Government increased its commitment to OER Links to an external site. has put open education and OER in the spotlight. However, trying to define what an open educational resource is (and is not) can be a challenging task, and there is no "right" answer.

Part of the challenge surrounds the word “open”. Pause for a moment and consider what “open” means to you. Have you heard this term before, and if you have, did people always use it the same way? Consider for a moment that you are currently enrolled in this Massive OPEN Online Course. How is this different from content that is “openly” available for public viewing online? Would you consider the results of a Google image search to be "open"? Would you consider Facebook to be open? What about other social media such as Twitter, Pinterest, or Blogger?

Image

As we can see from these sources, there is not one central definition of open educational resources, but rather variations on a theme:

  • Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. (Hewlett Foundation Links to an external site.)
  • Open educational resources are freely accessible, openly licensed Links to an external site. documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. (Wikipedia Links to an external site.)
  • Open educational resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released under an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution. (UNESCO Links to an external site.)
  • The term "open educational resources" refers to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing. (The OER Handbook Links to an external site.) 

The 5 Rs of Openness

For this course, we will consider OERs by their adherence to five openness criteria. The intention is not to categorize and label learning materials as either OER or not OER, but rather to identify where along a continuum of openness the materials reside.

Free vs Open.jpg

As depicted in the figure above, the criteria we will use to do this are referred to as the five Rs of OER (Wiley, 2014) Links to an external site. referring to the usage rights granted by the copyright holder to others. 

  1. Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
  2. Reuse: the right to 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: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  4. Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
  5. Redistribute:  the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Free versus Open

As depicted in the image above, there is an important difference between free and open when considering open educational resources. While a resource found on the Internet may be "free" (i.e. made available at no cost to view or use on the owner's website), the fine print of the copyright license and terms of use often make a resource far from "open" based on the openness criteria described above. For example, the copyright and terms of use provisions of resources found on the Internet might preclude you from using the materials for your desired purposes in the classroom (e.g., block you from downloading and storing a copy, printing and distributing it to students, making revisions, etc.). Therefore, it is always important to look for and read the copyright license and terms of use to see what the provisions are with regard to retaining, reusing, revising, remixing, or redistributing the resource in order to determine if the resource is merely Free (Gratis) and assess to what degree it is Open (Libre):

  • Free (Gratis) - resources are freely available and free to access, but your use of the resource is restricted in some way. Even if the materials can be accessed without cost, other barriers might be in place, such as the inability to retain, reuse, revise, remix, or redistribute the work.
  • Open (Libre) - resources are free, and the copyright holder has removed barriers to either retain, reuse, revise, remix, or redistribute the work.

What about "Fair Use" for educational purposes?

At this point in our coverage of open educational resources, you might be asking, "What about 'fair use' for educational purposes? Can't I use any materials without permission if it is for instruction?" The answer is, "It depends, but probably not in the way you want to use the materials."  

As defined on the U.S. Copyright Office website Links to an external site.:

"Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances." 

As noted within this U.S. Copyright Office website, many factors come into play in considering whether the Fair Use doctrine applies, including:

  • Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes,
  • Nature of the copyrighted work,
  • (This is a biggie for our purposes) Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and
  • Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Unfortunately, the "Fair Use" doctrine is often too broadly interpreted (or misinterpreted) by educators as meaning "the copyright license doesn't matter if you are using the work for educational purposes" resulting in both gross plagiarism and copyright violation. While some use could be permitted (e.g., small excerpts of a larger work for the purpose of critique), Fair Use is not a blanket educational exemption, but is determined on a case-by-case basis (based on the factors noted above) ... and citation/attribution is still needed. Therefore, please don't make the mistake of assuming that due to the "Fair Use" doctrine any work can be used for educational purposes within your instruction without proper permission (or attribution).