Open Educational Resources (OER): Home

During the 2019 Regular Session of the West Virginia Legislature, House Bill 2853 established the West Virginia Program for Open Education Resources and added section §10-1-14a to the Code of West Virginia, 1931. This section provides the following definition for open educational resources:

(2) “Open education resource materials” means teaching, learning and resource materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits low cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium - digital or otherwise - that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions."

- William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (emphasis added)

OER can include:

• Textbooks
• Assignments, Handouts, Tests and Quizzes
• Audiovisual Resources, Sound Recordings, Photos, Illustrations
• Entire Courses, Lesson Plans
• Anything to help you teach as long as it is open.

It is not enough to be free. OER should also be "open." But what do we mean by open?

The 5 Rs of Openness

• Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
• 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 open content 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)

(5 R's text from "The Access Compromise and the 5th R" by WV native and Marshall University alumnus David Wiley, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.)