Open Educational Resources (OER) are “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research.” This term was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries funded by the Hewlett Foundation. A commonly-adopted definition of OER originated with the Hewlett Foundation and it goes: "OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge."
The term OER has been used to refer to learning materials such as:
Some of the core benefits of adopting OER are:
Here in the North Orange Community College District, we encourage faculty and students to explore OER and adopt OER where there is a good match for the curriculum and pedagogical approach. We want to hear from you. Please provide us with your feedback at clibugg@nocccd.edu.
Why use OER?
http://studentpirgs.org/campaigns/sp/make-textbooks-affordable
http://studentpirgs.org/sites/student/files/reports/NATIONAL%20Fixing%20Broken%20Textbooks%20Report1.pdf
What organizations support institutions in using OER?
http://oerconsortium.org/
http://www.oeconsortium.org/
What does the research say about OER?
http://oerresearchhub.org/
Examples of college-specific OER pages?
http://open.tacomacc.edu/
http://www.pcc.edu/library/services/faculty-services/oer/