What Are Open Educational Resources?
Open educational resources (OER) are guided by the idea that high-quality educational materials should be available to everyone. OER are educational materials that save students and teachers money because they are free to use, customize, and share. Because they’re freely available, OER materials are easily accessible for all districts and teachers. They also make distribution faster because they’re easily downloadable.
OER make customization easier because they can be edited to accommodate different learning styles, cultures, languages, and local contexts. OER can continuously evolve with the most updated and relevant information for students because they are being used and adapted by classroom teachers in real time.
Based on early research, OER show promise in improving student outcomes and providing more empowerment opportunities for teachers.
How Can Educators Use Open Educational Resources?
All OpenSciEd units are designed as open educational resources that are licensed as CC-BY-4.0. This license allows educators to use, modify, and reuse all of our resources to meet their students’ needs. This license does require appropriate attribution, which means you must give credit to the author, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that OpenSciEd endorses you or your use.
We encourage educators to share broadly and openly any changes and innovations they make to these resources so others can reflect on and take advantage of their best thinking.