Faculty OER Toolbox

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. That means they have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights. For some of these resources, that means you can download the resource and share it with colleagues and students. For others, it may be that you can download a resource, edit it in some way, and then re-post it as a remixed work. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared. -- from OER Commons

OER content does not require a request for permission to use it. There are 5 R's of Open Education Resources use.

1. Retain:  You can keep the work forever.

2. Reuse:  You can use the work for your own purpose.

3. Revise:  You can adapt, modify, or translate the work.

4. Remix:  You can combine it with another resource to make a new work.

5. Redistribute:  You can share the work with others.

OER are educational materials that are distributed at no cost with legal permission for the public to freely use, share, and build upon the content. OER are and always will be free, but not all free resources are OER.

Free resources may be temporarily free or may be restricted from use at some time in the future (by adding access fees). Free (but not open) resources may not be modified, adapted or redistributed without obtaining special permission from the copyright holder.

Works that are in the public domain are no longer protected by copyright and may be freely used without obtaining permission from the copyright owner. Learn more about public domain at Copyrightlaws.com.

The Holt Library subscribes to numerous paid databases containing eBooks, streaming videos, articles, etc. which are under copyright and are licensed for use by our college. These are available at no cost to students, faculty, and staff, and may be linked or embedded in Moodle.