Understanding Open Education

Resources Apryl McDonough

What are Open Education Resources (OER)

Open educational resources (OER) are educational 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 (definition by Hewlett Foundation). • Format: materials in any medium, digital or otherwise• Conditions: that either

• resides in the public domain or • has been released under an open license,

• Nature: which permits its free use and re-purposing by others.  

Using OER All Rights Reserved vs. Open License

All Rights Reserved

• Item belongs to the creator, only

• You may not use, download, or recreate the work

• You must ask permission is you wish to sue the work

Open License • Item belongs to the creator• You may use, download, or

recreate the work• You DO NOT need

permission but you must cite the author

Most Common Types of Open Licenses

• Open Hardware License • Open Source Software License • Open Game License • Open Database License • Createve Common License – The focus of this

presentation

Creative Commons

• A non-profit organization that enables sharing and use of created works and knowledge using legal free tools.

• Various licenses apply with the use of Creative Commons• Licenses are free and allow the creator to choose the

amount of use for their work • To be eligible for Creative Commons the work must be

available on a public domain

Types of Licenses • Attribution- Others can copy, distribute, perform and remix your work if they

credit your name as specified by you.• No Derivatives- Others can only copy, distribute, or perform verbatim copies of

your work.• Share Alike- Others can distribute your work only under a license identical to the

one you have chosen for your work.• Non-Commercial- Others can copy, distribute, display, perform or remix your

work but for non-commercial purposes only. The above text from “About the Licenses (Links to an external site.)” by Creative Commons (Links to an external site.), CC-BY (Links to an external site.)

Challenges and Benefits to Using Creative Commons and OER

Challenges • Licenses can be changed, license can

be hard to prove at the time of use• Quality Assurance • Finding usable information takes a

great amount of time• Lack of public understanding • Citing the works is laborious and

takes time

Benefits • Shared work adds additional

resources to student learning• Saves costs for students • Social responsibility – provide

learning for all• Allows for peer reviw • Licenses allow creators to set user

limitations

Finding an OER

• For all types of OERs search on http://www.openwa.org/find-oer/%20

• The site encompasses:• all categories, • licensing information, and • An example of how to attribute the work

Qualifying for a Public Domain

• In order for a work to qualify for a Public Domain a work must • 1: The term of copyright for the work has expired.• 2: It never had copyright protection.• 3: The work was explicitly donated to the public domain.• 4: The work is a work of the U.S. Government.

Determining if the Work is in a Public Domain

• 1. Locate the work's publication date and see if it is published before 1923. If it is, the work is automatically placed in public domain. Some examples in this category include: 

• 2. Research books that were published between 1923 and Jan 1, 1964. 90% of books during this period are not copyrighted, since their copyright holders failed to extend their copyright.

• 3. Determine whether the work is eligible for public domain status. If it is a work of the US government and other government agencies, the work may be considered to be in public domain.

• 4. If none of the above cases are met, you will have to do research to determine whether the work in question is in the public domain. Please use the guidelines found in Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States (Links to an external site.), developed by Peter Hirtle at Cornell University. This provides an extensive guide for determining if a work is in the public domain. Watch his video (Links to an external site.) with this guide.

References

• Creative Commons - http://creativecommons.org/