Open Educational Resources- a short guide With thanks to the Unicycle project

“OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property licence that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge”. William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, supporter of the worldwide Open Educational Resources (OER) movement What are they?

1. OER are free to use and publicly available. 2. OER can be used in teaching and learning (usually with attribution to the creator). 3. The majority of OER can be altered and adapted (‘repurposed’.) 4. Using OER is not cheating; it can improve learning experiences by building on other people’s work. 5. OER development is a global movement – don’t be afraid to search global OER repositories. 6. OER materials are not just teaching materials; there are a number of student support materials Some key points

1.Spend more time designing learning rather than creating content. (You really don’t have to recreate the wheel). 2.Get recognition for your own materials development by sharing them as OER. 3.Engage in a global community of sharing and using educational resources. 4.Collaborate with colleagues to release OER materials. 5.Set yourself an OER development target and implement it as a SMART objective. Some points for academics

6.Spend more time working to your strengths and search for free materials where your own content may be weaker. 7.Encourage your students to search for OER materials to support their own learning. (You never know, they might find something you can use next year!) 8.Embed the use of OER as part of your module/course review process. 9.Be proud of your work and share it with others as OER. 10.Get recognition for your work, being attributed by others through OER release. Some points for academics

1.Engage a wider range of learners by accessing a wider range of student support resources. 2.Spend more time improving the learning experience rather than content creation. 3.Provide access to resources that you wouldn’t be able to offer without OER (e.g. photos or videos of locations and situations you can’t create/access). 4.Encourage students to access and share OER as part of their development. 5. Offer a range of learning materials to students for the same content (encompassing more learning styles). How can OER benefit the student experience?

6.Use OER as a way of building a range of student support resources. 7.Develop case study OER with students and release them. 8.Improve student feedback and assessment by using available OER materials. 9.Enable prospective students to see more detail of your course before they register. 10.Enable students to review material and refresh their knowledge and understanding after they have completed their course. How can OER benefit the student experience?

1. Ensure that any media or content you use does not have any third party copyright or IPR restrictions (or that permission has been granted and recorded) 2. By default Google searches for images which are copyright and is therefore not the best source for OER 3. has a search tool for a range of media content 4. Creative Commons is not about giving up rights to your work, but making it available under certain conditions. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) – some key points

5. OER materials released through our project will be assigned the CC-BY-NC-SA licence – where material is reused, you will be attributed as the original author and your material may not be used commercially. 6.Fair dealing is a copyright term that allows limited use of material without requiring permission from the rights holders. This may apply to some teaching situations but NOT for the development of OER. 7.Creative Commons licences are enforceable by UK law. 8.More detailed information is available from the OER IPR Support Project’s: OER IPR starter packOER IPR starter pack Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) – some key points

This resource was created by the University of Plymouth, Learning from WOeRK project. The project is funded by HEFCE as part of the HEA/JISC OER release programme.Learning from WOeRK This resource is licensed under the terms of the Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license ( The resource, where specified below, contains other 3 rd party materials under their own licenses. The licenses and attributions are outlined below: 1. These contents are based on, A staff guide to Open Educational Resources, developed by the Unicycle project, based at Leeds Metropolitan UniversityUnicycle project The name of the University of Plymouth and its logos are unregistered trade marks of the University. The University reserves all rights to these items beyond their inclusion in these CC resources. The JISC logo, the and the logo of the Higher Education Academy are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution -non-commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK England & Wales license. All reproductions must comply with the terms of that license. Author Pete Watton InstitutionUniversity of Plymouth Title OER benefits Description Presentation Date Created 6/12/10 Educational Level Keywords IPR, OER, Intellectual Property Rights Creative Commons License BY NC SA ©University of Plymouth, 2010, some rights reserved