Quick Reference Guide

KEY CONCEPT
What does OER stand for?

OER stands for Open Educational Resources. OERs are teaching and learning materials provided openly and without cost to students; OERs can be open textbooks, courses, learning modules, digital learning objects, open-access journals, streaming videos, and more.

What is an OER?

The most comprehensive definition of OER available today is provided by the Hewlett Foundation:

Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.[1]

So, Open educational resources(OER) are openly-licensed, freely and easily accessible educational materials that can be adapted and redistributed by users. While many think of OER as referring predominantly to open textbooks, OER includes a vast variety of resources, such as videos, images, lesson plans, coding and software, and even entire courses.

Attribution: “What is OER? [Youtube]” [1:39}]y The Council of Chief State School Officers is available under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 licence.

The 5 Rs of OER

For a resource to be considered open, it must fulfill the following criteria called the 5Rs:

  • Reuse – take a resource and use it in any context that you want
  • Remix – take multiple resources and mix them to create a new resource[2]
  • Revise – take a copy of a resource, change it and adapt it to the local context[3]
  • Retain – take a copy and have control of that copy forever
  • Redistribute – the right to share what you have created[4]

With a broad definition that includes any educational material so long as it is free to access and open, it might be easier to ask, “What isn’t an OER?”

What is Not an OER?

If a resource has a traditional copyright licence or requires a fee to be accessed, it is not considered an OER. For example, most materials accessed through the library’s subscriptions cannot be altered, remixed, or redistributed. Therefore, these materials require special permission and are not “open.” Similarly, YouTube’s standard license includes a traditional copyright statement that does not allow videos to be retained (saved), altered, or remixed. materials that can be accessed freely by students (via the general internet or a library subscription) but do not meet the 5Rs as accessible resources.

THINK: Make a list of the materials you currently use in your classes. Next, categorize each resource as OER, accessible, or other. How many OERs are your students using? Consider ways you could incorporate (or switch to) free materials as opposed to using paid or traditional publisher resources. For more help with OER, contact Fanshawe’s OER Design Studio.

Benefits of Using OER For Students

Cost Saving

One of the first aspects of OER to be praised by the general public was the cost savings that they could bring to students. Alongside tuition fee increases at Canadian institutions of about 3% every year, compulsory fees can set students back nearly $1,000 a year and are often not covered by student loans. According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian undergraduate student paid approximately $1,091 in compulsory fees during the 2023/2024 school year.[5] This price was up 4.5% from the previous school year.

CONSIDER: The cost of textbooks might not be a major issue on its own, but it can be an insurmountable hurdle for students already struggling to get by. Many students are increasingly experiencing some degree of food and housing insecurity while attending college. Inaccuracies in cost-of-living estimates, especially for international students, and the dependence on student loans can be contributing factors for running out of money near the end of the semester. Often, the unexpected additional cost of textbooks can make the difference between a student persisting or dropping out.

Benefits of Using OER For Faculty

Although cost savings are a major talking point in favour of open educational resources, instructors can integrate OER into their courses without removing the paid resources they find helpful[6]. While creating an entire OER textbook can seem daunting, the gradual integration of small OER as supplementary resources can be built up over time. Over a few years, instructors may find that they have tailored so many small OERs to their course content that these resources are more effective in supplementing the course than the paid resources they previously used. The freedom to adapt OER to instructional needs is often the most attractive aspect of OER. Since OERs are openly licensed, educators can edit, reorder, and remix OER materials in various ways.

Use, Improve, and Share

Many instructors report using their required course textbooks in different orders than suggested or skipping entire portions of the textbook altogether.[7]  Using OER allows instructors to adapt and revise existing versions of openly licensed books to fit their course material better. Supplementary resources may be added directly to the text, streamlining resource access for students and giving a clear course outline that aligns with the syllabus. Instructors may also update an existing OER to provide modern and culturally relevant examples.

Network and Collaborate with Peers

A significant concern with open resources is that they may be seen as less reliable than traditionally published materials that go through rigorous editing processes. However, opening up resources makes it easier for peers across institutions to review and edit each other’s work. The ability for others to edit and re-share work also allows you to explore the reviews and gain a deeper understanding of the available resources. Not to mention, creating open resources is a great chance to build a team of peers to help develop a new and valuable learning tool.

Lower Costs to Improve Access to Information

One of the most popular reasons for creating and reusing OER is that it allows every student easy access to course resources. This, in turn, benefits instructors, for all of their students will have all the tools needed to succeed in the course, regardless of financial or accessibility barriers. Open course resources may also lead to more passionate and engaged students, as students can explore course material before enrolling.

Need OER Support?

Fanshawe’s OER Design Studio

OER Design StudioThe Fanshawe OER Design Studio provides support to faculty and staff looking to adopt or create open educational resources (OERs) to be used by students in Fanshawe courses and programs.

The OER Design Studio provides the following supports:

  • Research assistance
  • Copyediting
  • Copyright compliance
  • Graphic design and multimedia creation
  • Instructional design
  • Publishing

Contact Us

Email: oer@fanshawec.ca

Additional Resources

The following are additional resources for this topic:

Open Textbook Repositories in Canada

Open Textbook Repositories outside of Canada

Additional Guides

TIP: Search for OER in Google

Using Google Advanced Search is a great way to find resources by license type. Here are directions on how to use Google Advanced Search to find materials with open licenses.

  1. On the Google Advanced Search page, scroll to the bottom and look for the “usage rights” field. (Links to an external site.)
  2. Change the “usage rights” field to “free to use share or modify” or “free to use, share or modify, even commercially” depending on what type of license you want.
  3. Use the other fields to plug in key words and to narrow your results.
  4. Hit the “Advanced Search” button.
  5. The results page should show only Creative Commons resources. Make sure to verify exact license type and terms of use.

References

The section has been adapted from the following:

“Introduction to Open Educational Resources” in Foundations of Open Educational Resources Copyright © 2022 by Southern Alberta Institute of Technology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Change log: This version contains stylistic, organizational and branding changes that differ from the above source. In addition, changes in wording and references to other institutions and external resources have been either updated or removed. 

  1. William & Flore Hewlett Foundation. (n.d.). OER defined. Retrieved from https://hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/ ↵ ↵
  2. The resource must explicitly state that it is available for remixing and redistribution by others. Some open licences may include restrictions on how others may use the resource. You can read about this more in the Copyright & Licensing chapter. ↵
  3. Although all OER are openly licensed, many are released in formats that do not easily allow for adaptation. ↵
  4. Council of Chief State School Officers, (2016)."What is OER?" Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDTCdMKlDQw&t ↵ ↵
  5. Statistics Canada (2023). Table 37-10-0046-01 Canadian students additional compulsory fees by level of study. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.25318/3710004601-eng ↵
  6. The Benefits for Instructors section of this chapter was adapted from SUNY OER Services. (n.d.). Leveraging the Benefits of OER. Understanding OER. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-oercommunitycourse-understandingoer/chapter/leveraging-the-benefits-of-oer/ ↵
  7. Liebermen, M. Inside Higher Ed. (2019). Slow Burn for OER Adoption, Awareness. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/09/oer-adoptions-awareness-continue-grow-many-faculty-members-still ↵
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School of Language and Liberal Studies Copyright © 2023 by Fanshawe College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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