Welcome
Welcome to PCC's Open Educational Resources Guide
Welcome! Whether you're looking to save your students money, find quality teaching materials, or just curious about what "OER" means, you're in the right place.
Open Educational Resources are free, high-quality materials like textbooks, videos, assignments and more that you can use, adapt, and share in your courses.
This guide will help you find OER in your discipline, learn about adapting and adopting OER resources, understand how licensing works, learn about grant funding opportunities, and more.
Why Use OER?
Why Use Open Educational Resources?
Image description: A yellow framed postcard labeled "Three reasons to use Open Educational Resources" on the left side with line drawings and doodles. The right side is divided into three sections listing the three reasons: "Empowerment: students can find and share resources", "Access: cost barriers are reduced", and "Success: studies show better outcomes"
Three reasons to use OER by Claire Coulter, Scott Cowen, Emma Gooch is licenced under CC BY 4.0
Introducing the 5Rs
Defining the "Open" in OER
Open Educational Resources include any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like "open source") that is licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities:
- Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
- Reuse - the right to 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 - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
Graphical representation of the 5 R's of OER, designed by graphic artist Kiersten Merkel, for the Auraria Library, for inclusion in the OER Bazaar exhibit at COLTT17 (Colorado Online Learning and Teaching with Technology.)
OER Support
Whether you're deep into a complex OER project or are just interested in learning a bit more, we are here to help! Please be in touch:
- Email OER@pcc.edu
- Schedule OER office hours with Rachel Bridgewater, OER Librarian. Consultations can be in person at Cascade, via phone or online.
We can help with questions about finding OER, creating, adapting and sharing OER, copyright questions, funding, and more!
Want to learn more?
Interested in learning more?
- Explore this guide
- Check out the PCC OER website
- Watch the SPARC Open Education 101 series
- Peruse this helpful OER starter kit
- Read the FAQ from Open Oregon
- Get in touch!
Contributors
Content for this guide has been developed by PCC Librarians Marianne Tanner, Jen Klaudinyi, Rachel Bridgewater, and Amanda Bird.