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OER Initiatives at Drake

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either a) in the public domain, or b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities: retaining, remixing, revising, reusing, and redistributing. (Creative Commons)

It is important to clarify that creators of OER retain copyright, as they would for any other original work. The key distinction is that creators apply an open license to the work that explicitly allows others to do things like revise and redistribute the content.

More information about open licenses is available in our OER Initiatives at Drake guide.

Why Use OER?

Benefits for Students

  • Available at no cost. Lowers the overall cost of textbooks.
  • Freedom to access the content at any time, from any device.
  • Unlimited access to content on the first day of class.
  • Permanent access.

Benefits for Faculty

  • Students have immediate access on day one.
  • Content can be modified to meet your course's needs.
  • No need to move to a new edition unless you choose to.
  • Downloaded OER don't go out of print.
  • Many OER are peer-reviewed.

The 5 Rs

The terms "open content" and "open educational resources" describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like "open source") that is either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities. 

  1. Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
  2. 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)
  3. Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  4. 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)
  5. 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)

From http://opencontent.org/definition/

Image of the "5 Rs of OER" retrieved from Making Open Educational Resources: A Guide for Students by Students and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License.