Open Educational Resources (OER)
What are OER?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.” (From the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation)
OER include a wide variety of course material types, including open textbooks, modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, games, and simulations. They are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities:
- Retain (You can keep the work forever.)
- Reuse (You can use the work for your own purpose.)
- Revise (You can adapt, modify, or translate the work.)
- Remix (You can combine it with another resources to make a new work.)
- Redistribute (You can share the work with others.)
There are a few options for using OER: You may:
- adopt materials as-is
- adapt materials to meet your needs
- create materials to share openly with other instructors.
Interested in adopting, adapting, or creating OER for your course(s)?
Reach out:
- UNL’s STAR initiative team, via Brad Severa, bsevera@nebraska.edu
- Catherine Fraser Riehle, catherine.riehle@unl.edu, and Melissa Gomis, melissa.gomis@unl.edu, UNL Libraries
