Open Educational Resources are any type of resources that have been designed for use in teaching and learning and that are: 1) freely available at any time and 2) published with an open license that enable users to reuse, revise, remix, retain, and redistribute them (commonly referred to as the "5Rs")
Open textbooks are available to students free of cost in digital formats. Many open textbooks are accompanied with ancillary resources such as question banks, slides, instructor manuals, and adaptive quizzing platforms.
Where to find OER to use in your online classes:
There are many places where you can locate high quality OER. We recommend these to get started:
Visit the Open Educational Resources guide for more information on OER and where to find them: https://libguides.kpu.ca/opentextbooks
If you require any assistance or have any questions about the resources found, please contact the KPU Open Team at https://www.kpu.ca/open-education-questions or your liaison librarian.
There are also grants available related to OER through the Office of Open Education:
The Open Educational Resources (OER) Grant program provides funding and staff support to KPU faculty members interested in creating, adapting, and adopting OER (or engaging in other forms of Open Pedagogy). Three levels of OER Grants are offered:
BCcampus has provided shortcuts to some disciplinary lists of OER that may also be a good place to start:
Students should not hit a paywall with either an open or a licensed resource. Most of the resources described in other pages of this guide are not considered 'open'. They are licensed from a vendor, and there are specific instructions on how they can be used (cannot be changed, must be proxied to ensure use by KPU students).
**A licensed resource will require the student to login using their KPU id if they are off campus and will not ask them to pay to access.**
**An open resource should not require a login. A truly 'open' resource should adhere to the 5 R's:
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 (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
REVISE
the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
REMIX
the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
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)
David Wiley, CC, Marchy 2014, http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221