How do you tell if an educational resource is an OER?
98 views | Last updated on Aug 27, 2024
The key distinguishing characteristic of Open Educational Resource (OER) is its intellectual property license and the freedoms the license grants to others to share and adapt it. If a lesson plan or activity is not clearly tagged or marked as being in the public domain or having an open license, it is not OER. The most common way to release materials as OER is through Creative Commons copyright licenses (pictured below). This means you can copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
BY: credit must be given to the creator.
NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
Learn more about OERs with our OER Library Guide