Open Textbooks/Open Educational Resources: Understanding OER

Open Educational Resources are instructional materials intentionally created to be free to students. These materials are licensed by author/creators to permit and encourage distribution, modification, and retention. Resources may be in the form of textbooks, multimedia, full courseware, and more.

Use of Open Educational Resources encourages faculty experimentation and innovation, facilitates the practice of open pedagogy, and increases affordability of and access to educational experiences.

Researchers and educators making use of Open Educational Resources may adopt resources created by others, adapt resources for use by editing or combining elements of resources created by others, or create new openly licensed resources. The edited resources can then be re-published for further use and revision.