OER are teaching resources that have an open-copyright licence (such as one from Creative Commons), or they are part of the public domain and have no copyright. Depending on the licence used, OER can be freely accessed, used, re-mixed, improved, and shared.
Open textbooks are a subset of OER, and while we focus much of our effort on creating, assessing, sharing, and supporting open textbooks, there are many types of OER available, such as:
One of the driving factors for the adoption of OER, such as open textbooks, is they are free. But cost savings is not the only benefit of using OER – they are an essential part of an open pedagogy, and can be used to create a powerful learning experience for your students. Studies have revealed a “positive relationship between the use of OER and student academic achievement” [PDF] and suggest that OER may help to decrease withdrawal rates while increasing overall student grades.
Former BCcampus Director of Curriculum Services, Paul Stacey, shared a comprehensive article on the Economics of Open, which provides an abundance of reasons to choose and use OER.
This section is adapted from BC Campus Open Ed's "What are Open Education Resources?" . It is available under a CC-BY-NC license.