Open Educational Resources (OER): Overview

"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." [1]

The Open Education movement is built around the 5 Rs of Open [2]

• Retain -- users have the right to make, archive, and own copies of the content
• Reuse – content can be reused in its unaltered form in a wide range of ways 
• Revise -- content can be adapted, adjusted, modified, and altered 
• Remix – original or revised content can be combined with other open content to create something new 
• Redistribute -- copies of the content can be shared with others in its original, revised or remixed form 

You may here the phrase "open access."  OER are a subset of open access (OA).  OER are always Open Access, but not all OA materials are considered OER. [3]