What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Now that you have an overview of the course, we can begin to learn about OER. If you are new to OER, there is much to learn. To conquer the more complex areas of OER, you need to have a firm foundation about exactly what makes a resource “open.” If you plan to use OER in your course, you will need to identify open materials and other materials you can use in specific contexts. Even if you are familiar with OER, you can use this module to review major concepts and ideas.

OBJECTIVES

In this module, you will learn how to do the following:

Define an open educational resource (OER)
Recognize the importance of using OER in your classroom
Identify and compare different open resources such as open-source software, open access journals, and open data.

LEARNING RESOURCES

On each page, we have collected some of the best resources to help you learn about OER. We encourage you to look at the resources provided, but we know that you are busy and constrained by time. To help focus your attention, preview the quiz for this module. This will help you know what to focus on as you work through the module.

ASSIGNMENTS

The assignments for this module:

Discussion Board - Introduce yourself and connect with your peers.
Discussion Board - Your Institution's Values
Quiz - What are Open Educational Resources? This quiz will check your understanding of the OER, open access, equity, and advantages of using OER.

Begin by clicking "Next" for an introduction to and the advantages of using OER.

Attribution:

Introduction to OER Links to an external site. By Rachel Arteaga and Suzanne Wakim. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.