Open Educational Resources: OER 101

What is an open educational resource?

• Teaching, learning, and research resources that are created with the intention of being freely available to users anywhere in the world.
• They are created with open licenses (typically Creative Commons licenses) that allow others to freely reuse, remix, and share the content.

Examples include:

• Textbooks
• Slide decks
• Test banks
• Photos
• Videos
• Assessment tools

Learn more:

• The Learning Portal's OER Toolkit (English)
• Le Portaild’apprentissage - La Trousse REL (Français)

Source: This content is a derivative of "Open Educational Resources (OER) - A Primer: Introduction" by Douglas College Library, available under a CC BY 4.0 license

On Wednesday, March 27, 2019, York University Libraries hosted an introductory workshop on open education for faculty, librarians, educational developers, and students. This event was generously sponsored by eCampusOntario. This Google Drive folder provides access to all of the materials from the presentation. 

Unless otherwise noted, all original content in this guide is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It is not necessary to seek permission to reuse or remix the content, although attribution is required. Please provide attribution to York University Libraries.  

The 5R Framework:

Developed by David Wiley, this framework ensures that an OER is more than just a free, digital resource. By creating an OER with an open license it allows others to reuse and redistribute the work, while also giving them permission to remix the content for their own teaching or learning context. Each R can be defined as:

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 (i.e. in a class, study group, on a website, in a video)
3. Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (i.e. translate an OER into another language) 
4. Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (i.e. create a Canadian edition of an open textbook)
5. Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (i.e. send a copy of the content to a friend)

ALMS Framework:

While using an open license is one part of the equation, creators can also use the ALMS framework to guide their choice of technology. Technology choices impact how others can exercise the 5R permissions. The ALMS framework has 4 key principles:

1. Access to editing tools: Was the OER created/published in a format that can only be revised using expensive tools (i.e. Photoshop)? Or was it published using tools that are freely available and run on major platforms (i.e. OpenOffice)?
2. Level of expertise required: Was the OER created using a tool that requires significant technical expertise to revise or remix (i.e. Blender)?Or did it use software that requires minimum technical expertise to revise or remix (i.e. MS Word)?
3. Meaningfully editable: Was the OER published in a way that makes it impossible to revise or remix (i.e. secured PDF file)? Or was it published in a way that makes it easy to revise (i.e. a text file)?
4. Self-sourced: Is the source file format also the preferred format for consuming the OER's content (i.e. HTML)? If not, it can make it more difficult to revise or remix the open content (i.e. PNG vs the original Photoshop file)

Source: This content is a derivative of "Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources" by David Wiley, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)