Open Education, Open Pedagogy, and Open Educational Resources (OER)

Any teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have an open license are considered OER. OER are distributed at no cost with legal permission for the public to freely use, share, and build upon the content. OER can include textbooks, lecture recordings, videos, presentation slides, assessments, software, articles, and other content published online and shared openly.

• Affordability and equitable access for students.
• Offers a means to collaborate worldwide on the development of equitable resources.
• Encourages faculty to customize curriculums to better align with learners’ needs and to engage in new pedagogical models.

Open educational resources are and always will be free, but not all free resources are OER. With free resources, educators can use the materials but do not necessarily have the right to modify or share them with others. A resource must have the “5R” permissions to be considered OER. The 5R’s include:

• Retain: Freely make and own copies of resources in any format for any amount of time.
• Reuse: Freely using the materials in any way.
• Revise: Edit, adapt, and modify the materials to any use.
• Remix: Combine one or more parts of resources into one resource.
• Redistribute: Share and distribute resources in any format.

Digital OER are easy to share, modify, and redistribute, but being digital does not make something an OER. Like most educational resources, OER are commonly “born” digital, but like traditional resources, they can be made available to students in any format.

The distinguishing characteristic of OER is its use of intellectual property licenses that preserve freedoms to share and adapt resources. The most common way to release OER materials is through Creative Commons licenses–standardized, free-to-use open licenses already used by over 2 billion works worldwide.

One of the great things about OER is that users have the right to convert it into any format. Therefore, OER aren’t tied to a particular type of device or software, giving students and schools the flexibility to use resources with whatever technology is available. In cases where technology isn’t available, the option to print and produce physical copies is preserved by open licensing.

OER are considered free because they are available under open licenses, which allow anyone to use and modify them, under specific conditions, for free. They can be free in terms of cost for the end user, although it doesn’t mean they are always totally gratis. But we have to distinguish costs of investments, production, distribution and costs for end users. For individual users like students and teachers, OER should have no monetary costs (if available online) or as little cost as possible for a print version.

There are no educational resources that cost nothing. There is always the cost or production, distribution or adoption, as they need financial or human resources to be created or adapted. The difference is in where and how do we distribute OERs more efficiently and lower the costs for each group of users.

OER do that by lowering costs of updates (they can be made by anyone, any time, and without copyright barriers) and/or costs of distribution (encouraging online publications and supporting competitive and cheaper print and production).

Most modern educational resources—from textbooks to lectures—start out as digital files before being converted into other formats including (but not limited to) print and audio. The same goes for OER. Most OER start out as digital, but can be used in a wide variety of formats for many different devices. For example, an open textbook can be printed, read on a screen, or heard through text-to-speech technology. The difference between OER and traditional resources is that students and educators do not have to choose between formats. With traditional materials, students often need to purchase print books and ebooks separately, and digital materials often carry an expiration date.

In this increasingly digital and internet connected world, the old adage of “you get what you pay for” is growing outdated. New models are developing across all aspects of society that dramatically reduce or eliminate costs to users, and this kind of innovation has spread to educational resources. OER publishers have worked to ensure the quality of their resources. Many open textbooks are created within rigorous editorial and peer-review guidelines, and many OER repositories allow faculty to review (and see others’ reviews of) the material. There is also a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that OER can be both free of cost and high quality—and more importantly, support positive student learning outcomes.

OER carry the permissions for users to freely download, edit, and share the content to better serve all students. These permissions are granted by the creator of an OER through an open license—a legal document that informs users of their right to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the work. Open licensing is a simple, legal way for authors to keep their copyright and share their work with the public under the terms and conditions they choose.

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a set of standard open licenses that are used throughout the OER community. Materials licensed under CC licenses are easy to identify, clearly explain the permissions and conditions of reuse, and don’t require any additional permission to use or adapt. To add an open license to a work, an author simply needs to include a copyright statement indicating that the resources carry a CC license, and include a link to the specific license.

Everyone recognizes that it takes time and effort to develop high quality educational resources, and that there must be incentives and support models in place for OER to be sustainable in the long-term. Incentives take many forms. Non-monetary incentives include course release time or recognizing OER as a contribution toward tenure and promotion. Funding models include grants and up-front payments to authors to develop resources, which then become openly licensed. Commercial models are developing around important value-added services, such as professional development, curation, and customization. In fact, virtually all of the largest traditional publishing companies have launched services branded as OER.

Instructors increasingly expect publishers to provide ancillary materials with textbooks, including lecture slides, images, videos, and homework platforms. This demand for ancillary materials is beginning to be met directly by OER publishers and commercial learning software companies who offer complementary products to open textbooks. There are also many repositories that hold openly licensed materials that can serve as ancillaries, including PowerPoint slides, videos, and simulations. Library staff can work with professors to help find these resources or share resources that other professors have already created. Teaching and learning staff on campus can also help with creating new ancillary resources.

Adopting an OER program does not mean that you have to throw away all your closed resources on day one. A lot of OER are developed as a supplement to the current teaching methods, especially in primary and secondary education (up to 18 years of age). Start with one book for one class in the fall semester. Share the assignment you have created as a teacher openly on one of the (inter)national platforms intended for it. Include one or two open textbooks in your proofreading of new textbooks for the class you teach in spring. See the advantages of OER for yourself, gather evidence and use the evidence collected all over the world about the value of open and then discuss a broader adoption of the system in your institution. To use a cliché: Rome was not built in one day.