Contributed to the TLCo-op by Alina Holmes, Graduate Research Assistant of the Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment, 2020.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free, digital teaching resources including textbooks, journal articles, podcasts, video, and more. OER are generally part of the public domain or licensed using Creative Commons licenses. They can often be reused, shared, or modified to fit the needs of the user. Western’s OER website provides the big picture of the progress WWU is making with open educational resources.
Instructors can either find OER to use in their courses or create OER to use and then share. The Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment (CIIA) at Western has curated an OER Toolkit as part of the Teaching Handbook that offers step-by-step advice to those looking to get started creating OER.
See also:
- Open Educational Practices Toolkit (Teaching Handbook)
- Open Educational Practices-themed Innovative Teaching Showcase (2018-19)
Image Attribution: “OER-Logo” by Markus Büsges, Wikimedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0