#OpenEducationalResources, often shortened to #OER, is the hashtag educators, librarians and policymakers use for open educational resources: teaching, learning and research materials that sit in the public domain or carry an open license, so anyone can use, adapt and share them at no cost. UNESCO’s definition covers materials “in any format and medium” released under “an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.”
Origin
- 1998–1999: open content. Wikipedia records that the link between OER and open-source software “was first established in 1998 by David Wiley,” who coined the term “open content,” and that Richard Baraniuk made the same connection in 1999 when he founded Connexions (now OpenStax CNX).
- 2001–2002: MIT OpenCourseWare. The MIT OpenCourseWare project “is credited for having sparked a global Open Educational Resources Movement,” per Wikipedia, after MIT announced in 2001 that it would put its entire course catalog online and launched the project in 2002.
- 2002: the term is adopted. “The term ‘open educational resources’ was first adopted at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries,” according to Wikipedia.
- 2008: Cape Town. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration “was released on 22 January 2008,” urging governments and publishers to make publicly funded educational materials free online.
- 2012: Paris. The 1st World OER Congress met in Paris on 20–22 June 2012, convened by UNESCO, the Commonwealth of Learning and partners, and produced the Paris OER Declaration.
- 2019: a UNESCO Recommendation. The Recommendation on OER was adopted in Paris on 25 November 2019. UNESCO calls it “the first international normative instrument to embrace the field of openly licensed educational material.”
How It’s Used
The hashtag gathers posts about finding, adopting and building open textbooks, courses, videos and assessments, and about the policy work behind them. Much of the conversation is about licensing, because an OER is defined by what its license permits rather than by its price alone. Creative Commons describes OER, “powered by CC licenses,” as allowing educators “to create, adapt, translate, localize, and freely distribute high-quality learning materials.”
Open textbooks are a frequent topic. Wikipedia notes that OpenStax, “a nonprofit educational technology initiative based at Rice University, has created openly licensed textbooks since 2012.” The cost of commercial textbooks is a related thread; see #TextbookCostsCrisis. OER also overlaps with #MOOC and #EdTech conversations, and borrows its logic from #OpenSource software.
Foundations have shaped the field. Wikipedia describes the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation as “the main financial supporter of open educational resources in the early years.” The Hewlett Foundation says its grantmaking still “supports open educational resources (OER) — which are free for educators and students to use, adapt, and share.”
The 5Rs of Open Content
The permissions that make a resource “open” are often summarised as the 5Rs, which Wikipedia says were proposed by David Wiley and which the Creative Commons definition of OER builds on.
| Permission | What it lets a user do |
|---|---|
| Retain | Make, own and control copies of the content |
| Reuse | Use the content in a wide range of ways, such as in a class or on a website |
| Revise | Adapt, modify or translate the content itself |
| Remix | Combine the original or revised content with other material to make something new |
| Redistribute | Share copies of the original, revised or remixed content with others |
A free-to-read resource that forbids copying or editing is not OER under this test; the license has to grant these rights.
Recent Developments
UNESCO reports that the Dubai Declaration on OER “was formally adopted on November 20, 2024, during the 3rd UNESCO World OER Congress,” and describes the declaration as aimed at advancing the implementation of the 2019 Recommendation.