An Open Education Resource (OER) is a teaching resource that can be used and reused freely for educational purposes because the author(s) have released the work to the public for that purpose - usually using a Creative Commons licence.
In order for a resource to qualify as an Open Educational Resource, users must be able to do the following (The five Rs):
Reuse – use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
Revise – adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
Remix – combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
Redistribute – share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
Retain – make, own, and control copies of the content
(This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221)
Types of OER
Open Access Educational Resources come in many forms, from images and media files that can be used in teaching to presentations, lecture notes, assignments, textbooks, courses, syllabi and more.