"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials...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" (UNESCO)
- OER materials are diverse: While Open Textbooks may be the most talked about form of OER, any document, from a syllabus, to a lesson plan, a video, or an activity worksheet can be made openly accessible to be usable by other instructors.
- The adoption of OER materials benifits students: Including OER in a course can not only reduce the cost of course materials for students, but it can help faculty find new ways to increase student learning using new tools and new open pedagogical models of education, such as the flipped classroom.
- Faculty can use OER materials in many ways: They can adopt a complete OER resource into their course, adapt them to better fit existing course content, or remix a collection of OER materials into a new resource to use in the classroom.
- Faculty can create their own OER materials: Share them with a Creative Commons license, making them available for other instructors to use and adapt.