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Open Educational Resources (OER): Home

What are Open Educational Resources?

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

OER allow users to:

  • Retain – users have the right to make, archive, and own copies of the content
  • Reuse – content can be reused in its unaltered form
  • Revise – content can be adapted, adjusted, modified, and altered
  • Remix – original or revised content can be combined with other content to create something new
  • Redistribute – copies of the content can be shared with others in its original, revised or remixed form.**

*From The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
**5 Rs from David Wiley

Why OER?

According to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Student PIRGS 2014 report, Fixing the Broken Textbook Market:

  • 65% of students are deferring purchase of a textbook because of cost
  • 94% of these students are concerned that not having the textbook would affect their grade
  • 48% of students had decided against taking a course because of the cost of the textbook

If your textbook is online, you can start using it from the first day of class – no need to provide extra time for students to buy a copy.

 

Your OER Librarians

Your liaison librarian can help you locate existing OER and will work with you to determine their quality and suitability for your class.

For additional assistance with OER, please contact: 

Carla Myers

Coordinator of Scholarly Communication

p. 513.529.3935

OER & Affordable Learning Initiatives @MU

Miami University is now offering Open Educational Resource (Alternative Textbook) and Affordability grants.

Complete information is available on the Provost's site.

Licensing

Creative Commons LicenseUnless otherwise specified, this Miami University Libraries OER Guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).