Open Educational Resources

What is OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. 

OER can be any type of educational material— a class handout, an image, even a textbook, or an online course. OERs use open copyright licenses such as Creative Commons that allow for different degrees of openness and allow users, like faculty and students, to engage in one or more of the 5Rs: 

Retain: Make, own, and control your own copy of content 

Reuse: Use the content as-is

Revise: Adapt, adjust, modify, update, or alter the content

Remix: Combine the original or revised content with other OER to create something new

Redistribute: Share your copies of the original content, revisions, or remixes with others

The worldwide OER movement is rooted in the human right to access high-quality education. This shift in educational practice is not just about cost savings and easy access to openly licensed content; it’s about participation and co-creation. In sharing teaching tools and strategies, educators network their strengths and improve the quality of education for their students. With an open practice, educators are able to adjust their content, pedagogies, and approach based on their learners, without the limitations of “all rights reserved”.

OER and College Success

There have been multiple studies on faculty implementations, misunderstandings, acceptance of, and evaluation of OER. The Review Project has curated a number of these empirical studies published in scholarly journals on the topic. Their general conclusion is: 

Once adopted, OER provide the permissions necessary for faculty to engage in a wide range of pedagogical innovations. In each of the studies reported above, OER were used in manner very similar to the traditional textbooks they replaced. We look forward to reviewing empirical articles describing the learning impacts of open pedagogies. 


Looking for evidence of OER benefits for students?  Read 'The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics,' which can be found here:  https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1184998.pdf 

History of OER

This History of Open Educational Resources Infographic presents how the Internet is becoming one of the best places to get a an education.  PUblished in the  by Course Hero, an online learning platform for course-specific study resources:  https://elearninginfographics.com/history-open-educational-resources-infographic/ 


Some of this material is adapted from David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/. 

OER at UNM

UNM-Albuquerque OER website  
Support for the larger University community.

Faculty Online Teaching Home  for UNM-Valencia Campus
Guide to OER for Valencia Campus 


If you are ready to explore, this UNM-Libraries OER Primer is a good starting point, created for UNM by our own OER Librarian, Jennifer Jordan. You read that right. UNM has an OER Librarian who works closely with our Faculty, across all branches, to explore, implement, and interact with OERs in each discipline.  Please feel welcome to reach out to her directly, her contact info is on the OER Primer libguide.

Student FAQ about OER

How do students' benefit from using OER?


How do I know if my classes are using them?

It will be clearly stated in your course syllabus, canvas course. Ask your instructor if you have questions about any aspect of your course.


Will I get the same quality of education?

UNM faculty members are responsible for ensuring the quality of resources within their courses. Instructors have evaluated the quality and accuracy of each resource and determined that the materials meet their needs.

Finding OER 

Discipline Specific Resources

Math

Humanities

Language Learning

Sciences

Social Sciences

Nursing and Allied Health



Evaluating OER

Evaluating Open Educational Resources
Evaluating OER is similar to the process you follow to review textbooks and other materials for your course. Here are a few OER specific questions to ask yourself:

Evaluation Rubrics, Checklists and Tools


You may use this Open Educational Resource Evaluation Rubric (created for you by Alexa Wheeler) as a guide to determine if the resource you are considering is beneficial to the course. She shares this rubric as a guide for informing your decisions. 

Here are other online rubrics that may be helpful:


Open Access

OER and Open Access seem to have a lot in common. Check out these resources for more information.

Open Access Scholarly Publications as OER

Video: Turning a Resources into an OER


Accessibility 

Make sure to make your OER accessible to your potential audiences. There are many different ways to go about this, including offering different formats and using clear organization. Check out the BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit as a guide during this process. Look into this as early as possible during the creation or adaptation of OER because the changes are easy to implement at the beginning, but become more difficult as the project moves forward.  


Copyright Concerns with OER

You might be wondering about your rights as a faculty member. How might OER you create or redistribute increase your impact? What copyright concerns should you have? Do OER "count" as publications? Many of these questions are still being explored, these resources help explain why:


Online guides to explore OER 

Organizations

The following organizations are dedicating to supporting OER and facilitating their use in academia. If you'd like to further support open learning, please visit their websites. Some resources also go beyond this guide to give more extensive information on OER.

LibGuides on the Web

These reference guides from various universities and relevant organizations provide instructors a broad understanding of Open Educational Resources (OER), including how to find, evaluate, use, and adapt OER materials for their own curriculum.