Open Educational Resources (OERs)
Dedicated to the exploration and promotion of OERs
What are Open Educational Resources?
The concept of Open educational resources (OER) emerged during a 2002 UNESCO Forum on Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries. The initial concept was further developed as follows:
Open Educational Resources are defined as ‘technology-enabled, open provision of educational resources for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.’ They are typically made freely available over the Web or the Internet. Their principle use is by teachers and educational institutions to support course development, but they can also be used directly by students. Open Educational Resources include learning objects such as lecture material, references and readings, simulations, experiments and demonstrations, as well as syllabuses, curricula, and teachers’ guides. (Wiley, 2006)
The course textbook was incredible. Not only was it free, but it was structured better than other textbooks. I did not feel the need to go online and find videos to help like in other classes. I believe this was largely thanks to the course textbook, which concisely
conveyed the necessary information making studying much more simple.
Research & Learning
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the ways educators can work within the guidelines of copyright
while using digital media to develop educational content in legal and ethical ways
by exploring several key contemporary trends in digital content creation.
Upcoming OER Events
Are you a UVic faculty member who is interested in creating/adapting and disseminating accessible educational resources? This workshop will introduce you to Pressbooks – an open source, online authoring and publishing platform.
By the end of the workshop, you will be able to:
- Create and build an e-text
- Create accessible headings, tables, and footnotes
- Insert accessible media into your material
Please create an account for Pressbooks, hosted at BCcampus for all post-secondary institutions in B.C., before you attend the workshop.
Call for OER Grant Proposals
Deadline: January 31, 2023
OER at Let’s Talk About Teaching 2022
August 30- September 1, 2022
Journal on OER in Higher Education
The Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education (JOERHE) is a Diamond Open Access, open peer-reviewed journal. The journal features content concerned with OER, Open Pedagogy, Open Access, Open Data, and similar topics focusing specifically within the context of Higher Education in the United States and Canada.
The 5Rs of Openness
Turning a Resource into an Open Educational Resource (5:10)
RETAIN the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
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 open content 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)
David Wiley, CC, Marchy 2014, http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221
The UVic Open Hub
Coming Soon!“The UVic Open Hub is a portal for developing open education initiatives, resources, and community to increase the availability, access, reuse, and redistribution of knowledge artifacts and to support the participation of stakeholders, including undergraduate and graduate students, staff, faculty, and administrators, in areas spanning research (open access, open scholarship, open data), teaching and learning (open education, open pedagogy, open educational resources), and service (connecting open practices for community engagement, marketing, recruitment).”
Further Reading
- Educause. (2010, June). 7 Things you Should Know about Open Educational Resources.
- Educause. (2008, January 18). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0
- Collins, F. (2013, June 11). How Open Access Empowered a 16-year Old to Make a Cancer Breakthrough.
Suggest a Link or Resource
Contact
Inba Kehoe
Head, Scholarly Communication & Copyright Officer
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Accessibility