Sue Shaffer Learning Commons and Library: Guides: Open Educational Resources: Home

Open Educational Resources

What are OER?

"Open Educational Resources [OER] are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." -- The Hewlett Foundation

Open Licenses

While copyright requires users to ask for permission before use, Creative Commons licenses sit on top of copyright and allow creators of a work to tell users up front how they will allow their work to be used.

Why OER?

EQUITY: OER are freely available online which means that all students will have access to at least an online version starting from the first day of class.
- CONSIDERATIONS: Not all students have access to technology and the internet. Not all students have the same comfort level and ability to read online texts. Consult with the college store for low cost print-options for your OER.
AFFORDABILITY: Savings on textbooks helps lower the cost of higher education for our students.
- The textbooks has risen above the consumer price index since 1977.
- As UCC faculty and staff have worked together to increase OER adoption, the average cost of textbooks for an AAOT degree at UCC dropped from $2,355.03 in 2015 to $1,640.36 in 2017.
FLEXIBILITY: Depending up on the license used, OER allows faculty and students to engage in the 5R Activities of content:
- Retain
- Reuse
- Revise
- Remix
- Redistribute

OER - FAQ and Professional Development

OER Checklist

Contact the UCC Library for help finding OER for your course. We will send you a curated list of OER that is relevant for your course. If you are interested, ask us about OER professional development, OER reviews/stipends, and grants to adopt, remix, and create OER.
Look through the curated list of OER to determine whether any will meet the needs of your course.
Contact your colleagues and department chair to let them know that you will be adopting the OER for your course.
Submit your OER textbook adoption by the textbook adoption deadline for the term you wish to adopt.
- Be sure to include the link to the textbook when you submit your adoption in Verba.
- Make a note in Verba that your textbook is an OER. This will be seen by college store staff.
Email the college store to let them know that you will be adopting the OER and ask them to work with you to set up making a low cost, print option for sale at the college store for your students who would like it. Some students prefer to use print versions for a variety of reasons.
Fill out this short form to share the OER you're using with other faculty in Oregon and internationally. It will be posted on the Resources page of the Open Oregon Educational Resources website. This is where faculty from Oregon and also from other countries will look to get ideas for OER to use for their courses. You can choose to submit your OER course materials anonymously or to provide your name and email so that other faculty from around the world could contact you with questions.
Contact the UCC Library for help with copyright/creative commons licensing and remixing course content.
Contact UCC Online for help integrating your OER into Canvas and ensuring that it meets accessibility standards.
Teach your students how to use the OER textbook on the first day of class.
- Show them how to access it in different formats.
- Tell them that there is a print version available in the college store (assuming that you set this up with the college store).
- Show them how to take notes digitally (ask the library or UCC Online for help with this).
- Show them how to use functionalities of the online formats (e.g., CTRL + F to search for words within the text).

Creative Commons License Types

This portion of a larger infographic, by Foter, helps to explain Creative Commons Licenses.

Would you like to share your work under a Creative Commons license? Adding a CC license to your work is free and only takes a minute. Use the tools linked below to help you choose the appropriate CC license for you. Additionally, each of the license tabs in this box has a copy of the code for that particular license.

Choose a License
Simply enter the information about your work, and Creative Commons will provide you with the html code and icon to post with your work.
How to Choose an Open License Toolkit
Published Aug 2020, National Forum OER/OEP Series: Open Educational Resources & Open Educational Practices

CC BY -- Attribution

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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CC BY-SA -- Attribution-ShareAlike

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

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CC BY-ND -- Attribution-NoDerivs

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

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CC BY-NC -- Attribution-NonCommercial

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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CC BY-NC-SA -- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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CC BY-NC-ND -- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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