With the rising cost of textbooks, students' ability to access their required learning materials can often be a barrier to fully participating in their courses and succeeding in their studies. At the same time, the rapid change in technology continues to adapt how we engage with information.
The Open Education Movement seeks to bridge the gap between the high cost of textbooks and student retention, graduation, and success. Open Educational Resources provide a solution in the form of low and no-cost course materials, which can be created and shared both in print and digitally. Consider adopting OERs within your course, teaching with open textbooks and resources, and allowing student collaboration with Open Pedagogy.
This guide is a great starting point in your OER journey; use the information presented to learn more about Affordable Learning Georgia, the 5Rs of OER, and openly licensed educational materials.
Open Educational Resources (OER): Openly licensed (i.e. public domain/Creative Commons) educational materials that can be used, reused, modified, and redistributed for teaching, learning, and researching purposes free of charge.
Copyright: Copyright law protects the creator of an original work (or the owner of the copyright for that work) by granting him or her exclusive rights to the work for a set length of time, including the rights to reproduce, publish, sell, and make derivative works.
Creative Commons: A nonprofit organization that offers a way for people to license their work in order to maintain the level of control they desire. There are a variety of licenses available ranging from very strict (similar to copyright) to completely open and free. Learn more at https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/.
Fair Use: The Fair Use doctrine sets forth the rules and conditions which must be met in order for copyrighted work to be used for educational purposes. Learn more at https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html.
Licensing: Licensing is the process by which the creator/owner of a work allows others to use (and/or reproduce, adapt) their works.
Institutional repository: An institutional repository is an online archive of materials hosted and maintained by an organization, such as a college or university. Institutional repositories allow institutions to house the scholarly work of their members online.
Open Access: Materials (scholarly articles, textbooks, datasets, etc.) which are open access are free to be used, distributed, remixed, and adapted by anyone, ideally immediately upon creation.
Public domain: Works which are not (or are no longer) protected by copyright are considered to be in the public domain, meaning they can be accessed and used freely by the public.
Open Pedagogy: The use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning, or the open sharing of teaching practices with a goal of improving education and training at the institutional, professional, and individual level. Learn more at https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-is-open-pedagogy/.
Adapted with permissions from "Open Educational Resources: Guide to OER Terms" by IRSC Libraries. Available at http://irsc.libguides.com/openeducationalresources/terms.
