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Open Educational Resources

A guide to how to find open educational resources and open access textbooks

Introduction to OER

Open Educational Resources (OER), are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere. “Open” permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials.

 

Retrieved from SPARC's website: https://sparcopen.org/open-education/

Benefits of using OER include:

  • Reducing barriers to education

  • Saving students money

  • Providing access to quality materials that can be shared with teachers and learners around the world

  • Students performing just as well or better than those using traditional materials

  • Giving instructors the freedom to customize their course materials

Content adapted from SPARC's Open Education page and Florida State University Open Educational Resources Libguide