Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license permitting free use. Common open licenses include Creative Commons, which allows creators to choose how their works can be used, shared and built upon. While finding and ensuring proper attribution of OER can require time and effort, using OER provides benefits like reduced costs for students and increased accessibility of resources.

1. Understanding Open
Education Resources
Apryl McDonough

2. What are Open Education Resources (OER)
Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that reside in the
public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their
free use and re-purposing by others (definition by Hewlett Foundation).
• Format: materials in any medium, digital or otherwise
• Conditions: that either
• resides in the public domain or
• has been released under an open license,
• Nature: which permits its free use and re-purposing by others.

3. Using OER All Rights Reserved vs. Open
License
All Rights Reserved
• Item belongs to the creator, only
• You may not use, download, or
recreate the work
• You must ask permission is you
wish to sue the work
Open License
• Item belongs to the creator
• You may use, download, or recreate
the work
• You DO NOT need permission
but you must cite the author

4. Most Common Types of Open Licenses
• Open Hardware License
• Open Source Software License
• Open Game License
• Open Database License
• Createve Common License – The focus of this presentation

5. Creative Commons
• A non-profit organization that enables sharing and use of created works and
knowledge using legal free tools.
• Various licenses apply with the use of Creative Commons
• Licenses are free and allow the creator to choose the amount of use for their
work
• To be eligible for Creative Commons the work must be available on a public
domain

6. Types of Licenses
• Attribution- Others can copy, distribute, perform and remix your work if they credit your
name as specified by you.
• No Derivatives- Others can only copy, distribute, or perform verbatim copies of your
work.
• Share Alike- Others can distribute your work only under a license identical to the one you
have chosen for your work.
• Non-Commercial- Others can copy, distribute, display, perform or remix your work but for
non-commercial purposes only.
The above text from “About the Licenses (Links to an external site.)” by Creative
Commons (Links to an external site.), CC-BY (Links to an external site.)

7. Challenges and Benefits to Using Creative
Commons and OER
Challenges
• Licenses can be changed, license can be
hard to prove at the time of use
• Quality Assurance
• Finding usable information takes a great
amount of time
• Lack of public understanding
• Citing the works is laborious and takes
time
Benefits
• Shared work adds additional resources to
student learning
• Saves costs for students
• Social responsibility – provide learning for
all
• Allows for peer reviw
• Licenses allow creators to set user
limitations

8. Finding an OER
• For all types of OERs search on http://www.openwa.org/find-oer/%20
• The site encompasses:
• all categories,
• licensing information, and
• An example of how to attribute the work

9. Qualifying for a Public Domain
• In order for a work to qualify for a Public Domain a work must
• 1: The term of copyright for the work has expired.
• 2: It never had copyright protection.
• 3: The work was explicitly donated to the public domain.
• 4: The work is a work of the U.S. Government.

10. Determining if the Work is in a Public Domain
• 1. Locate the work's publication date and see if it is published before 1923. If it is, the
work is automatically placed in public domain. Some examples in this category include:
• 2. Research books that were published between 1923 and Jan 1, 1964. 90% of books during
this period are not copyrighted, since their copyright holders failed to extend their copyright.
• 3. Determine whether the work is eligible for public domain status. If it is a work of the
US government and other government agencies, the work may be considered to be in public
domain.
• 4. If none of the above cases are met, you will have to do research to determine whether the
work in question is in the public domain. Please use the guidelines found in Copyright Term and the
Public Domain in the United States (Links to an external site.), developed by Peter Hirtle at Cornell
University. This provides an extensive guide for determining if a work is in the public domain.
Watch his video (Links to an external site.) with this guide.

11. References
• Creative Commons - http://creativecommons.org/