Open Educational Resources (OER)
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open Educational Resources - OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that are available online for free. These materials may include:
- Text Documents: Books, manuals, guides, academic articles, and other written content.
- Multimedia: Videos, animations, podcasts, and presentations.
- Educational Software: Applications, simulators, and interactive tools.
- Web Content: Web pages, blogs, and wikis.
Key Features of OER
- Free Access: OER are shared at no cost. Anyone can access them without economic restrictions.
- Open Licenses: OER creators use Creative Commons licenses to specify how materials can be used, adapted, and shared.
- Freedom of Use: Users can download, modify, and redistribute OER according to their needs.
Who are OER for?
OER benefit various groups:
- Students: They can access high-quality materials to complement their formal learning.
- Educators: They can use OER as teaching resources in the classroom or as a basis for creating customized content.
- Researchers: They can access data, reports, and academic publications.
- Professionals: They can find resources for continuous skill development. In summary, OER democratize access to knowledge and foster global collaboration in the educational field. It is always important to verify the quality and source of OER before using them in academic contexts.
Available Open Educational Resources
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Once you are enrolled in the course, you will always find an initial Welcome or Start Here block, presenting the contents available in the classroom. With this starting point, you can begin navigating, downloading materials, or reviewing online.
OER offer teachers, tutors, educators the flexibility to customize teaching materials, adapting them to their objectives and aligning them with the curriculum. They can also save time and resources by using resources already available instead of creating them from scratch.
Reusing an OER as is: If you find a resource with a Creative Commons (CC) license and want to use it in its original form without modifying anything, you just need to attribute authorship. For example, you can display it in a classroom, publish it in a virtual campus, or include it in a presentation. Some MOOCs also allow the free reuse of their content without allowing modifications to create new material. Adapting or modifying an OER to create a derivative resource: If you want to modify someone else's resource, you should verify that the usage license allows the transformation of the original resource. This includes translations, scripts based on a work, introduction of elements in images, among others. Make sure to comply with the terms of the license. Combining different materials to create a new OER: You can mix several OER to create original content. Make sure to respect the licenses of the original materials and attribute authorship properly.
OER provide you with the opportunity to expand knowledge, but there are no evaluative activities that allow measuring your learning, as in a tutor-led or self-paced course or another modality. That's why it's not possible to issue a certification.