Delgado Community College Libraries: Open Educational Resources: What Are OER?

Open = Free + Permission(s)

What Is... Open Content?

David Wiley coined the term "open content" to describe a creative work that can be freely accessed, used, copied, modified, or shared, in some cases (but not all) only requiring attribution to the creator. Open content is often made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

What Is... Open Access?

"Open access" refers to research that has been made available online without restrictions on access and few restrictions on reuse. Open access materials may be peer-reviewed, but are not always, and are available through open journals or data repositories.

Affordable vs. Open Educational Resources--What's the Difference?

Affordable Educational Resources:

Affordable Educational Resources are available at a reduced cost.
AER may include reduced-price textbooks or materials available for a small semester or yearly fee.
For-profit AER sometimes include OER components.

Open Educational Resources:

Open Educational Resources are available for free.
OER are often (but not always) made available with "no strings attached," meaning they can be remixed and redistributed, even when that is for profit, as long as they include attribution.

An example of an Open Education Resource would be a textbook that is available to instructors and students for free online or in print for only the cost of printing.

An example of an Affordable Educational Resource might be a homework module built around and packaged with that open textbook and made available to students for $25/semester. The affordable resource contains the free OER textbook but has the value added homework, and so there is a relatively small cost attached.