Definitions

The US Department of Education defines openly licensed educational materials as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others.” 

The State of California extended this definition as follows: “open educational resources” are high-quality teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license, such as a Creative Commons license, that permits their free use and repurposing by others, and may include other resources that are legally available and free of cost to students. “Open educational resources” include, but are not limited to, full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, faculty-created content, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

Texas SB 810 defines Open educational resources are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that allows for free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others, including full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”[2]

Colorado SB 17-258 states that “Open Educational Resources" means high-quality teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits free use or repurposing by others and may include other resources that are legally available and available to students for free or very low cost. Open Educational Resources may include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, faculty-created content, streaming videos, tests, software, and other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

This initiative intends to work with faculty and administrative committees at the University of New Mexico to write, adapt, or adopt a definition that makes sense to the university and is potentially shareable with the state of New Mexico.

 

OER Image by Lane Community College is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

Learn more about the OER Initiative on University Showcase

Picture of a hand holding a smart phone that is displaying library shelves filled with books.Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

University Showcase hosted by KUNM News Director Megan Kamerick recently featured OER Librarian Jennifer Jordan to discuss OER how open educational resources can benefit students by slashing the costs of textbooks. Click the image above to listen to the archived broadcast. That also features UNM professors and OER Champions Therese Baca-Radler, Dave Dixon, Cash Clifton, and Zachary Sharp.