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Open Educational Resources

Using OERs

Using OERs

The 5 Rs of OERs

OERs can be retained, reused, revised, remixed, or redistributed, which gives you the option of adapting OERs to suit your teaching needs. 

The 5 Rs of OER: Retain (keep forever); reuse (use for your own purposes); revise (adapt or modify); remix (combine with other resources).

Image by BCOER Librarians, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

For more details on the 5 Rs, see Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Education Resources.

How to adapt an OER

There are a number of things to consider when adapting an OER. For an in-depth guide on adapting OERs, see the Adaptation Guide produced by BCcampus OpenEd:

Choosing works to adapt

Before adapting an OER, you will need to make sure all the works you pull information from have a license that allows for adaptation.

  • For more general information on copyright and licensing, see Copyright advice.
  • If you need help understanding copyright licenses and their associated symbols, see About CC Licenses.

To find out if works are able to be remixed:

  1. Choose two works you wish to combine or remix, and identify their copyright licenses 
  2. Using the table in the image below, cross-reference the licenses
  3. If there is a check mark at the intersection of the row and column, you can combine the works
  4. If there is a cross at the intersection of the row and column, you cannot combine these works. This most likely indicates that one of the two licenses may not be used for commercial purposes, or one of the licenses does not allow for derivative works to be created.

Note: When remixing an OER, you must apply the most restrictive licensing associated with original works to the final product. See the Creating OERs tab for more information. 

Creative Commons license compatibility chart
 

Public domain

CC0

CC BY

CC BY-SA

CC BY-NC

CC BY-ND

CC BY-NC-SA

CC BY-NC-ND

Public domain

 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘

CC0

 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘

CC BY

 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘

CC BY-SA

 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

CC BY-NC

 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘

CC BY-ND

 ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

CC BY-NC-SA

 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✘

CC BY-NC-ND

 ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

This table, "Creative Commons license compatibility chart", is adapted from "License compatibility chart" by creativecommons.org, used under CC BY 4.0. "Creative Commons license compatibility chart" is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Murdoch University Library.

Tools for adapting OERs

The OER Commons repository has built-in authoring tools to help you adapt OERs:

Other tools that can be used to adapt and then publish an OER are shown in the table below.

Tools for adapting OERs by format
Original format Editing tools (web-based) Editing tools (desktop)
Word or Open Office     Google Docs, PressBooks    Microsoft Word, OpenOffice
ePub PressBooks Sigil, Calibre
Text Google docs, PressBooks Word, OpenOffice
LaTex ScribeTex TeXworks, Texmaker
HTML Google Docs, PressBooks, Media Wiki Dreamweaver, MS Expression Web
OpenStax College Connexions n/a

Authoring OERs

Information on authoring an OER is available from:

Licensing OERs

Apply a Creative Commons license for the re-distribution of your OER.

Consider how you would be comfortable with your OER being reused -  what permissions will you give others  to share and use your creative work.

Saving OERs

Murdoch University Library recommends you upload and store your OER at OER Commons. Authors can directly upload material and assign it to the Murdoch University Group.

Publishing OERs

For more on publishing OERs, see our Publishing Research guide: