OER FAQ

OER stands for Open Educational Resource. UNESCO describes OERs as "..learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others." (UNESCO, n.d.)

OERs have many benefits:

• Help students save on textbook costs
• Be updated more frequently than a traditional textbook
• Can include interactive content
• Can help fill in a gap for a textbook/resource needed in a niche topic

There are many OER repositories to review. Here are few resources to review:

• OER by Discipline Guide: McMaster University: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/mcmasteroerdiscipline/
• BCCampus OER by Discipline Directory: https://opentextbc.ca/oerdiscipline/
• BCIT Open Educational Resources
• University System of Georgia GALILEO Open Learning Materials: https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/
• OASIS: https://oasis.geneseo.edu/index.php
• MERLOT: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

In addition to searching the collections above, some organizations release a call for reviews. This list will be updated with recent calls for peer review. The Rebus community also maintains a forum where you can find calls for specific books at https://www.rebus.community/tags/cfp.
 

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are open licenses for content. In order for an OER to be "open," it should have an open copyright license, as opposed to the "all rights reserved" or other copyright often on traditional textbooks. There are a variety of different types of CC licenses that can apply for many situations. If you want to learn more about CC licenses or need help choosing which license works best for you, reach out to Keri McCaffrey, One Health and Scholarly Communication Librarian, knmccaffrey@upei.ca.