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Open Education Resources: What Are They?

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to provide Melbourne Polytechnic teaching staff with a starting point from which to learn about, explore, and develop Open Education Resources.

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What are OERs?

Open Education Resources (OERs) are FREE resources that can be used by students and teachers. An open textbook is a textbook with an open copyright license that allows the material to be freely accessed, shared and adapted. Open textbooks can be adapted, remixed or customised to maximise instructional content to meet your own learning objectives. 

5R's of an Open Textbook

A work is only considered open if you have the following rights when using it:

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, on a website, in a video)

REVISE:  the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g. language translation)

REMIX:  the right to combine the original/revised content with other open content (e.g. a mashup)

REDISTRIBUTE:  the right to share copies of the original content (eg revisions or remixes)

Information adapted from:  eCampus Ontario: viewed 22 June 2023 
Image source:   "What are OERs and why use them?"  Copied and communicated under  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License,