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Open Educational Resources (OER): Home

This Guide

This Guide will cover:

  • Define OER
  • Define the 5Rs
  • Free and lowcost textbooks
  • Sources for OER
  • Creative Common licensing
  • Evaluating OER
  • Attributing/Citing OER

Getting Started

Here are a few links to guide the process of finding and creating an open educational resource (OER):

If material is not an OER, you may consider requesting copyright permission. See Copyright box and Copyright and Fair Use Guide.

Discovery Search

The 5 Rs of Open

These are the possible activities, depending on the open license, that users are given permission to engage in with open content:

5Rs 5R Permissions

Retain

 Make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)

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)

Revise

 Adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content (e.g., translate the content into another language)

Remix

 Combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

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)

This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license  at  http://opencontent.org/definition/. 

Open Educational Resources - Faculty Portal

What are OER?

Texas Education Code Sec. 51.451 defines open educational resource:

(4-a) “Open educational resource” means a teaching, learning, or research resource that is in the public domain or has been released under an intellectual property license that permits the free use, adaptation, and redistribution of the resource by any person. The term may include full course curricula, course materials, modules, textbooks, media, assessments, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques, whether digital or otherwise, used to support access to knowledge.

Librarian

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Patricia Sotelo
Contact:
Pecan Campus Library psotelo1@southtexascollege.edu
(956) 872-1609