Open Educational
Resources
This is one of several articles where we will explore Open
Educational Resources (OER’s).
Before we can identify Open Educational Resources (OER), we need
to understand what defines OER. Currently, there are some common
principles for determining if and when material should be considered
"open". These are referred to as the 5Rs:
The 5Rs of Openness
·
Retain: the right to
make, own, and control copies of the content
·
Reuse: the right to
use the content in a wide range of ways
·
Revise: the right to
adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
·
Remix: the right to
combine the original or revised content with other open content to create
something new
·
Redistribute: the
right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes
with others
Retain: This principle supplies us with
perpetual ownership over the material. Many times, when we talk about
low-cost and free materials for students, the materials are supplied online -
but if you are unable to actually save a copy of that material of your own, and
students lose access to it after a course is completed -- then the material is
really not "open", but "licensed" for a specific purpose or
time. Let's consider streaming, online videos. You may be able to
freely access or embed a video from a website such as YouTube, but you may not
be able to download and save a video from such a site easily. In this
case, that video may not be considered a truly open resource.
Reuse: This principle
supplies us with the permission and right to reuse the material in a variety of
contexts. Many times, we like to have our students read scholarly
articles as supplemental material. But if the article come from a
database, you may not have the right to reuse that article outside the database
-- students may need to access it from within the database. And then you
may not be able to use it again and again as a permanent reading for your
course from year to year. Reuse enables you to control how you will
deliver and supply access to the open content.
Revise: This principle
allows you to take the content of the material and change it to fit your
specific needs. This means you can revise what already exists, but you're not
adding anything new to the content at this level. As an example, you
could translate the work into other languages, or format the content
differently so it emphasizes different points.
Remix: This principle
allows you to add to the content and to create something new. You can mix
in elements from other open resources that will result in a new resource.
If you were adopting an open curriculum, you could then add in additional
resources from other courses to build an entirely new curriculum that would fit
your vision.
Redistribute:
Finally, this principle supplies you with the ability to share the resources
with anyone and everyone without restriction, and is transferable once you
share it with someone, so that they are able to share it as well. Within
this, you can also generate copies of the material so that you still
"retain" a copy for yourself as you share.
This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which
was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at:
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221 .
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