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Open & Affordable Educational Resources

Introduction

What are Open Educational Resources?

"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 permits their free use and repurposing by others."

From the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation

 

5 Attributes of Open Content

According to the 5 R's of open content, open educational resources must be free and allow users to:

  1. Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
  2. Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
  3. Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
  4. Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
  5. Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

From opencontent.org

Librarian

Guide Author

Barbara Maratos
Literature & Languages Librarian
bkmarato@bu.edu