LibGuides: Open Educational Resources at UAlbany: What Are OERs?

What's not an OER?

OERs are openly-licensed, freely available educational resources that can be modified and reused by users.

Openly-licensed: The user can freely and legally share the work.
Freely Available: There is no fee for access to the work.
Modified: Permission is given via an open license to allow sharing, remixing and reuse of the work.

Some free resources may not be OERs. A learning resource is considered as non-OER if it is:

Not clearly identified as such
Not marked as being in the public domain
Not having an open license

Non-OER Examples
Material Type	Openly Licensed	Freely Available	Modifiable
Open Access Articles	Yes	Yes	No
Library Collections (subscribed content)	No	Yes	No
Free Web Resources (under copyright)	No	Yes	No

Some OA articles are able to be modified based on the author copyright permissions.
Library collections are available for students and faculty without cost, but are paid for by the institution and not available outside the University community.
Most web resources are freely available but cannot be modified or reused.

Source: https://instr.iastate.libguides.com

Attribution and Authorship

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Guide Authors: Library: Elaine M. Lasda, Associate Librarian and Keerthi Padamata, Radkowski-Lee Graduate Assistant 2019-2020

What are OERs?

"Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or research. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes. OER typically refers to electronic resources, including those in multimedia formats, and such materials are generally released under a Creative Commons or similar license that supports open or nearly open use of the content. OER can originate from colleges and universities, libraries, archival organizations, government agencies, commercial organizations such as publishers, or faculty or other individuals who develop educational resources they are willing to share."

For more information: 7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources

See also: resources from SUNY OER Services

OERs Facilitate Innovation!

Open educational resources. Source: Giulia Forsythe on Flickr, Public domain CC0 1.0

The 5 Rs of OER

"OER, The 5Rs of Open, and Creative Commons Licenses" by Martha Greatrix is licensed under CC BY 3.0