open education

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Research Guides
Harvard Graduate School of Education - Gutman Library

Open Education Resources (OER)

What are Open Education Resources?

About this Guide

What are open education resources (oer), why it's important to use oer.

OER and Accessibility
Finding OER
Creating OER
Evaluating OER
How to incorporate OER's in the classroom

Open Education Research Librarian

This Open Education Resources (OER) guide gives an overview to the Open Education movement, resources, and how educators can use OER's effectively. "For too long, our educational systems have operated with a fundamental disconnect between practices left over from the analog world, and the vast potential of technology and the Internet to support more affordable, effective teaching and learning. The movement for Open Education seeks to close this gap."

This guide is meant for educators and students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. While it is meant to be introductory, it is not a complete overview of OER. For any questions, please contact Quetzalli Barrientos (OER Librarian).

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials--digital or print that are in the public domain or have been released under an open license that allows no-cost access, use adaptation, redistribution by others with limited or no restrictions.

"Open" permissions are defined as the "5Rs":

Retain
Redistribute

OER examples include: Syllabi, worksheets, open textbooks, lesson plans, etc.

Are OER and OA (Open Access) the same thing? OA means that it is freely available, published digitally online, and has few restrictions on its use or reproduction (definition provided by the Open Access Publishing research guide at Harvard Countway Library)

OER is important to use because:

Textbooks costs should not be a barrier for education
Students who use OER are most likely to do better in school
Technology holds the potential to improve learning and teaching
Better education=Better future

The above is taken from SPARC: Open Education .

Next: OER and Accessibility >>
Last Updated: Jul 17, 2023 4:07 PM
URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/OER

Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy

Explore. Create. Collaborate.

Support a vibrant, educator-focused commons.

The tens of thousands of open resources on OER Commons are free - and they will be forever - but building communities to support them, developing new collections, and creating infrastructure to grow the open community isn’t. Grassroots donations from people like you can help us transform teaching and learning.

Make a Donation Today!

Introducing Open Author

Create OER with Open Author

Open Author helps you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you and for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere.

Build. Save. Collaborate.

Groups provides a flexible environment to organize, create, share, and discuss resources with others in your network. Collaborate with group members, tag and add resources to shared folders, create your own collections, all within a public or private group.

Extensive Library, Powerful Findability

Harness the power of the Commons

Dedicated to professional learning.

Our award-winning OER Professional Learning programs support instructors and curriculum specialists to gain the necessary skills required to find, adapt, and evaluate high quality open materials.

In-person and virtual OER workshops help focus instructors to develop a "commons" mindset, to experience the benefits of open processes using the platform's tools, collaborative features, and workflows. This can include using Open Author for creating, remixing, and publishing shared curriculum.

Become an OER Commons pro

How to Search OER Commons

How to Use Groups

How to Create a Profile

Open Education

Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment. Open Education maximizes the power of the Internet to make education more affordable, accessible and effective.

Open Access

Impact Stories
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Education is essential to advancing society. It’s how we pass down the wealth of human knowledge and equip the next generation of leaders, innovators, and citizens.

Expanding educational opportunities is more possible now than it has ever been before. Through the Internet, learners can find information instantly on virtually any topic, teachers can share their knowledge with students on another continent almost as easily as in their own classroom, and educational materials can be disseminated to a worldwide audience at virtually no marginal cost.

However, our systems for sharing information in education have not caught up with the potential of 21st century technology. Instead, the educational materials market is held captive by legacy publishing models that actively restrict the dissemination and innovative use of resources in a world that craves educational opportunities. Textbook prices have continued to rise rapidly, leaving too many students without access to their required materials. Digital offerings from traditional publishers come laced with access restrictions and expiration dates with little savings in return, and print editions are too often out of date by the time they hit the shelves.

For too long, our educational systems have operated with a fundamental disconnect between practices left over from the analog world, and the vast potential of technology and the Internet to support more affordable, effective teaching and learning. The movement for Open Education seeks to close this gap.

Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.

The foundation of Open Education is Open Educational Resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses ) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere. “Open” permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials.

Why Open Education

Textbook costs should not be a barrier to education. The price of textbooks has skyrocketed more than three times the rate of inflation for decades. College students face steep price tags that can top $200 per book, and K-12 schools use books many years out of date because they are too expensive to replace. Using OER solves this problem because the material is free online, affordable in print, and can be saved forever. Resources that would otherwise go to purchasing textbooks can be redirected toward technology, improving instruction, or reducing debt.
Students learn more when they have access to quality materials. The rapidly rising cost of textbooks in higher education has left many students without access to the materials they need to succeed. Studies show that 93% of students who use OER do as well or better than those using traditional materials, since they have easy access to the content starting day one of the course.
Technology holds boundless potential to improve teaching and learning. Open Education ensures that teachers, learners and institutions can fully explore this potential. Imagine a biology textbook that incorporates COVID-19 in the chapter about viruses, or a math tutorial that incorporates local landmarks into word problems. Imagine a lecture attended by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, or a peer-to-peer exchange between Canadian students learning Mandarin with Chinese students learning English or French. All of this and more is possible when the pathways for technology in education are fully open.
Better education means a better future. Education is the key to advancing society’s greatest goals, from a building a strong economy to leading healthy lives. By increasing access to education and creating a platform for more effective teaching and learning, Open Education benefits us all.

SPARC’s Work

Open Education Leadership Program : SPARC’s professional development program to empower library professionals as leaders for open education on campus.
Automatic Textbook Billing Contract Library : SPARC’s resource to help institutions examine the fine print behind “ inclusive access ” programs.
SPARC Open Education Forum: Vibrant discussion list for members of the open education community to share ideas, resources, and connect.
Connect OER : Join our platform to share and discover information about OER activities across North America, and read our annual report.
OER State Policy Resources : Check out our OER State Policy Tracker for the latest developments, or download the OER State Policy Playbook .
OER Digest : SPARC co-authors this bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders.
OER Mythbusting : Collaboratively developed resource dispelling the most common OER myths.
InclusiveAccess.org : A website supported by SPARC that provides information about automatic textbook billing.
SPARC Program Priorities
Join the SPARC Open Education Forum

Open Education Impact Stories

Project in colombia supports digital connections in rural areas.

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OER Saving Nursing Students Money on Books and Improving Success...

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Often Overlooked Sharing of Hardware is a Missing Link in Open...

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Popular Resources

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Open Educational Resources

OER in action
OER Dynamic Coalition

Open Educational Resources (OER) are 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.

Open license refers to a license that respects the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner and provides permissions granting the public the rights to access, re-use, re-purpose, adapt and redistribute educational materials.

The Recommendation on OER , adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference at its 40th session on 25 November 2019, is the first international normative instrument to embrace the field of openly licensed educational materials and technologies in education.

To support Member States implementation of the 2019 Recommendation on OER, UNESCO established the OER Dynamic Coalition. The OER Dynamic Coalition aims to support networking and sharing of information to create synergies around the 5 areas of action of the recommendation: (i) building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER; (ii) developing supportive policy; (iii) encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER; (iv) nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER, and (v) facilitating international cooperation.

Supporting universal access to information through quality open learning materials

Digital skills development for teachers

Contribution to the 2030 Agenda

UNESCO contributes to SDG 4 on quality education for all.

Gender equality, enshrined in SDG 5 and a key enabler to achieve all other SDGs.

SDG 9 calls for the enhancement of scientific research and innovation especially in developing countries.

SDG 10 calls for reducing inequalities.

UNESCO contributes to ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms.

SDG 17 calls for partnerships for the Goals.

OER and knowledge and skills acquisition: What is the UNESCO OER Recommendation?

This extract gives an overview of the different policy areas of the OER Recommendation and illustrates the potential of OER in building inclusive societies as well as the main stakeholders.

Event Cat II – Intergovernmental meeting, other than international conference of States OER Dynamic Coalition Webinar on Copyright in the Age of Emerging Technologies - Celebration of International Book and Copyright Day