- OER publishers have worked to ensure the quality of their resources. Many open textbooks are created within rigorous editorial and peer-review guidelines, and many OER repositories allow faculty to review (and see others’ reviews of) the material. There is also a growing body of evidence which demonstrates that OER can be both free of cost and high quality—and more importantly, they can support positive student learning outcomes.[1]
Also, be careful not to get pulled into a debate about high- or low-quality educational resources when what educators should really be concerned about is those resources’ effectiveness. Read these two posts from David Wiley: “Stop Saying ‘High Quality’” (https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3821) and “No, Really—Stop Saying ‘High Quality’” (https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3830).
Remixing and Adapting Resources
Being open enables educators to use the resource more effectively, which can lead to better learning and student outcomes. OER can be remixed, adapted, updated, or tailored and improved locally to fit the needs of learners—for example, by translating the OER into a local language, adapting a biology open textbook to align it with local science standards, or modifying an OER simulation to make it accessible for a student who cannot hear.
The ideas of remixing and adaptation are fundamental to education. The creative reuse of materials created by other educators and authors is about more than just seeking inspiration; we copy, adapt, and combine different materials in order to craft appropriate and effective education resources for our learners.
Incorporating materials created by others and combining materials from different sources can be tricky, not only from a pedagogical perspective, but also from a copyright perspective.
Online digital education resources have different legal permissions that empower (or not) the public to use, remix, and share those resources. Here are a few of those legal categories:
- Public domain works (which are not restricted by any copyright) can be remixed with any other work.
- Example: Anyone can remix The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
- Some “all rights reserved” copyrighted works are available for free online, but you can only use them under the project terms of service,
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