About Open Educational Resources (OER)

“OER is sharing” by giulia.forsythe is licensed under CC cc0-1.0

What is OER?

OER represents a global movement towards an “inclusive knowledge society.” The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, defines OER as “Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. OER form part of ‘Open Solutions’, alongside Free and Open Source software (FOSS), Open Access (OA), Open Data (OD) and crowdsourcing platforms.”

There are 6 related definitions of OER from: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), UNESCO, The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, The Wikieducator OER Handbook, and the OER Commons. You can read each definition and see a chart of their differences at the “What is OER” Creative Commons Wiki.

Elements of OER include

Open copyright license required
Right of access, adaptation, and republication
Non-discriminatory (rights given to everyone, everywhere
Does not limit use or form (does not include NonCommercial limitations

(“What is OER” Creative Commons Wiki)

5R Principles

For more on “Open,” see Defining the “Open” in Open Content

OER History & Background: A Global Movement

OER was first coined in 2002 by UNESCO. On November 25, 2019, UNESCO adopted a formal “Recommendation on Open Educational Resources” that provided the definition and scope of OER:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.

Information and communications technology (ICT) provide great potential for effective, equitable and inclusive access to OER and their use, adaptation and redistribution. They can open possibilities for OER to be accessible anytime and anywhere for everyone, including individuals with disabilities and individuals coming from marginalized or disadvantaged groups. They can help meet the needs of individual learners and effectively promote gender equality and incentivize innovative pedagogical, didactical and methodological approaches.

Stakeholders in the formal, non-formal and informal sectors (where appropriate) in this Recommendation include: teachers, educators, learners, governmental bodies, parents, educational providers and institutions, education support personnel, teacher trainers, educational policy makers, cultural institutions (such as libraries, archives and museums) and their users, information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure providers, researchers, research institutions, civil society organizations (including professional and student associations), publishers, the public and private sectors, intergovernmental organizations, copyright holders and authors, media and broadcasting groups and funding bodies. (“Recommendation on Open Educational Resources”)

The OER recommendation also included 5 areas of action:

Building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER
Developing supportive policy
Encouraging effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER
Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER,” and “Promoting and reinforcing international cooperation (“Recommendation“).

As an international movement, UNESCO hopes that OER will contribute to “building more open and inclusive knowledge societies and towards the achievement of the UN 2030 Agenda. Indeed, the implementation of the Recommendation will contribute to the achievement of at least six Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), namely SDG 4 (Quality education), SDG 5 (Gender equality), SDG 9 (Industry, innovation and infrastructure), SDG 10 (Reduced inequalities within and across countries), SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the goals)” (“UNESCO Recommendation on OER“).

OER in Higher Education

Kenneth C. Green’s “Reframing the Conversation about OER” provides a useful overview of the recent focus on OER in higher education, the current status of OER implementation on U.S. campuses, and some of the problems and issues associated with OER adoption. Digital Texts in the Time of COVID provides an overview of the use of OER and other digital texts in 2020.

OER at LaGuardia Community College

New York State has funded OER initiatives at CUNY since 2018 through its New York State OER Scale Up Initiative in a focused attempt to bring down the costs of textbooks (“Open Educational Resources“). CUNY maintains OpenEd CUNY, an online community for OER work.

At LaGuardia, the OER initiative has been primarily organized through the library. Ian McDermott is our college’s OER liaison and has co-led several different OER seminars.

Currently, both the Natural Sciences and MEC departments are working to replace their textbooks with OER options. You can see the Natural Sciences website here.

The English Department joined this work in 2021, focusing on creating a library of curated resources.

Ian McDermott also created the “Scholarly Communications Guide for Faculty: Open Access & OER” which is a great primer for OER resources available online or through LaGuardia’s library.