OER stands for Open Educational Resources, and is a term that refers to any educational resources that are typically:

1. Free to access online
2. Low cost to get a print copy
3. Licensed by the author/creator with rights that are less restrictive than copyright (i.e. all rights reserved). This license typically (though not always) includes the right of any user to copy (digitally) & print the text as well as the right to adapt it as desired for use in a course, as long as authorship is attributed and use is non-commercial.

Open Textbook is a specific type of OER that is designed to be a free or low cost substitute for a traditional textbook.

What is NOT OER

• Any eBook (unless it is free)
• Any website (unless it has a Creative Commons License)
• Articles from a library database (the student tuition pays for access)

NC DPI defines Open Educational Resources as:

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 and re-purposing by others.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundations defines Open Educational Resources as:

“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 and re-purposing by others. OERs include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."

David Wiley’s 5Rs of Openness:

• Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
• Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways
• Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
• Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., mashups)
• Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others