Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning, and research materials (books, articles, images, videos, curricula, and more) which are free to be used in educational settings. They may sometimes be subject to certain limits, depending on the license, but can be used without payment. (For more background, view definitions of OER from Creative Commons.)
In your teaching, you may encounter OERs in two ways:
Copyright refers to the legal rights of creators in publishing and sharing their work. Those form the basis of what we can and can't do with our intellectual work. Licenses further explain what can and cannot be done with intellectual work. Therefore, licenses matter!
In terms of OERs, in an ideal world they clearly provide use and re-use permissions through transparent licensing. Whether you use or create an OER, ideally there is clear licensing language that puts everyone on the same page.
"The "open" in open educational resources indicates that these materials are licensed with copyright licenses that provide permission for everyone to participate in the 5R activities - retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute." (From Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy by David Wiley and John Hilton.)
Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage).
Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video).
Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language).
Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup).
Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend).
