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Opening the Classroom Door to OER

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Affordable educational resources for students take various forms. Faculty may link to library subscription resources or refer students to credible websites. Free is good, but copyright restrictions and licensing may limit their use. Using open access journals and books prevents the door from being closed in the future. Or for a wide-open door with no lock, consider open educational resources (OER).

The concept of open is not new. The public domain, works that are not protected by intellectual property laws and are free to use without permission, is a familiar source to many.  Works enter the public domain in a variety of ways. A public domain work may initially come with a public domain license or it may be based on the age of the work.

Open access (OA) is a publishing model for scholarly communications that removes financial, legal, and technical barriers to accessing research articles. According to the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) “open access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.” Cornell University Library’s Open Access Publishing guide explains the types of open access journals, open access policies, and public access mandates.

Licensing is a major difference between open access and OER. Most OA authors and /or publications retain some copyright and licensing restrictions whereas OER uses open licensing. An open license “grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.” Creative Commons is a widely recognized license that conforms to Open Definition.

It is the open license that defines OER. David Wiley, a strong advocate of OER, identified 5 characteristics that define OER (see the image below). The 5Rs – Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute – have evolved into a mantra for OER and a resource without the 5Rs is not OER, but it may be an affordable alternative.

One last comment about open. Many educators falsely believe that the Fair Use provision of the U.S. Copyright Act automatically gives them carte blanche to use copyrighted materials. Fair Use has guidelines that must be examined and applied to every situation. Fair Use may unlock a resource temporarily but it does not remain open.

Resources

Thigpen Library’s Open Educational Resources guide, one of several faculty resources available from the Teaching and Learning Center, has information on finding OER, OA, and public domain works.

Stanford University has a collection of Copyright and Fair Use Charts and Tools to assist you with copyright questions.


Acknowledgments

"Key to the open door" image by Tawheed Manzoor is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“What's OER?” Lumen Learning | Open for student success, June 7, 2019. https://lumenlearning.com/about/whats-oer/.

Contributing Author

Since 2005 Livy Simpson has been working with Vol State students and faculty to connect them with the resources they need in their academic pursuits. She received her M.S. in Information Sciences from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and has an M.A. in History from the University of Iowa.
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Location: Gallatin, TN 37066, USA

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