Open Educational Resources (OER) are a useful tool for both teachers and students. On this page, we give comprehensive definitions on what OER are.

UNESCO defines open Educational Resources (OER) in their Recommendation on OER (2019) as "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." To make this definition more understandable, it helps to split up the term in its open, and educational resources section, starting with the latter.

For the educational resources section, we mean any material that is being used as an educational or teaching tool. This includes multimedia such as images, videos or (interactive) simulations, but also larger pieces of content such as syllabi, full courses, ancillary materials such as quizzes, and full textbooks.

For the open section, we mean that the copyright holder has waived all (when the material is in the public domain) or some of their rights (when there is an open license) to determine how others can interact with their material. More specific information these protections and the cases in which they are waived or not enforced can be found in our guide on copyright, the public domain, and open licenses. This means in practice that OER are free and have a greater flexibility in terms of how you are allowed to work with them. David Wiley summarizes this flexibility in his 5R framework*. Specifically, open materials/OER grant users the permission to:

• retain - make, own, and control a copy of the resource
• revise - edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource
• remix - combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new
• reuse - use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly
• redistribute - share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others

In actuality, for some "open" resources, not all of these permissions may be granted to the user. Whether all 5 R permissions, or only some of them apply to a material is dependent upon the specific open license attached to the work. More information on these licenses can be found in the aforementioned guide on copyright, and more practical information on how you can use OER in your course can be found in our guide on ways to use OER in teaching.

* This section is an adaptation of Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources, which was originally written by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.

As mentioned above, Open Education Resources (OER) are free, but not all free resources you find online and that you (want to) use in your teaching are open/OER. You are (often) allowed to use such free resources in your teaching in some way, but it is important to understand when a resource is truly open, simply free, or has been made available to you through your institution. By knowing this difference, you can ensure that your own (shared) course materials remain accessible and functional over time, and safeguard yourself against accidentally misusing materials found online in some way.

Open Educational Resources are open due to their public domain or open licensing status, meaning that protections granted to the creator or publisher through copyright are waived or not enforced. This means that you are completely free to save these materials and reupload them yourself (as long as you give proper attribution). In turn, this means that you can always keep using and tweaking this resource, even if the original source of the material is removed.

Free resources are similar to open ones in that you do not have to pay for them, but the creator or publisher of these resources retain the rights to determine how these materials are used, and often enforce them in some way. Misuse of these materials, such as altering them, or downloading and reuploading them elsewhere is generally not allowed, and can lead to fines. Many images, excerpts from books, or videos can be found online for free, but that does not mean that they are open. If you use them, it is best to link to them and give proper attribution. As you can only redirect people to them, there is no guarantee these materials are available in the future, so be mindful if you base (part of) your course on these kinds of materials.

Institutional (or library) resources are resources that are free to you and your students, but not to the general public. Access to them has been provided by your institution, which has negotiated a contract with the publishers or creators of the resources, and has paid for access to these materials. As these materials are not available for free to the general public, misuse such as resharing or altering these resources can lead to big fines. Linking to these materials and giving proper attribution is the best course of action, but keep in mind that only a select group of individuals, namely those at your institution, can access these materials for free. Similar to other free resources, institutional resources can disappear, and the terms of use laid out in the negotiated contracts can be altered over time. Therefore, there is no guarantee that these materials remain available to you or your students.

Checking the nature of resources you find online is important in understanding how you can work with them. If you need help with determining the license of a resource, are unsure on how to proceed with resources you think are protected by copyright, or want to know the possibilities regarding getting a license for some resource, you can reach out to the OER, copyright, and license management teams: oer-library@rug.nl, copyright@rug.nl, and liblicenses@rug.nl.

With the information in this guide, we hope that you have better understanding of what OER are. For more information on what OER are, or how you can spot them, you can reach the OER support services at: oer-library@rug.nl.

In our other guides, we outline how copyright relates to OER, reasons for why OER can/should be used in teaching, where you can find suitable OER yourself, how you can implement any found OER in your teaching, how you can create your own OER, and how you can share your own work as an OER with the world.