1.

Open educational resources are digital learning resources offered on line (although
sometimes in print) freely and openly to teachers, educators, students, and
independent learners in order to be used, shared, combined, adapted, and expanded in
teaching, learning and research. They include learning content, software tools to
develop, use and distribute, and implementation resources such as open licenses. The
learning content is educational material of a wide variety, from full courses to smaller
units such as diagrams or test questions. It may include text, images, audio, video,
simulations, games, portals and etc.

Open educational resources (OER) are free and openly licensed educational materials
that can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes.
Open Education "...is the simple and powerful idea that the worlds knowledge is a
public good and that technology in general and the Web in particular provide an
extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge."
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
OER Definitions
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
"OER 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 re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course
materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools,
materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."
OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)
"digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners
to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content,
software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources
such as open licences."
UNESCO
"teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that
reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits
no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited
restrictions."
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration
"Open educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which
facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources
should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that
accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Whenever possible, they should also
be available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and people who
do not yet have access to the Internet."
The Wikieducator OER Handbook
"The term "Open Educational Resource(s)" (OER) refers to educational resources
(lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely
available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing."
OER Commons
 "Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that you may freely
use and reuse, without charge. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license
that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared."

(Taken from https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/What_is_OER%3F)

2. One example of OER is Khan Academy

Khan Academy provides thousands of videos covering mathematics, science, history,

arts/humanities, computers and finance
Link to Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org
Watch Khan Academy Youtube videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy
3. The usage of OER is one of those innovations in the education world. Practically
speaking, OER has the following characteristics:

Freely accessible content, media and resources

Freely reusable copyrights and formats
Design is considerate of bandwidth and accessibility
Freedom and openness as principles in their production and use

Benefits of OER are mostly seen with regard to their impact on costs of education, which
are significant Although OPEN FREE OER are not in themselves a technological
innovation, but they are a force of social and educational innovation made possible by
technology.
o New forms of learning

Fostering 21st century learning

In reality, most OER are content-focused, to be used in existing

educational settings
At best, augmenting the teaching-learning process and the resources used
But 21st century learning requires a focus on more innovative skills
development and pedagogies
The relevance of OER lies not only in the quality of content, but also the
quality of the learning it facilitates and the kind of skills development it
supports
How can OER support innovative pedagogies?

Changing the role of learners from passive consumers to active producers

Fostering peer-to-peer learning
Stimulating problem-based learning
Enriching learning resources through collaborative practice
Enhancing the social and emotional context of learning

o Teachers collaboration
 How can OER support teachers collaborative practices?

Training and professional development for teachers on using OER

Using OER in teacher training and teacher professional development
Collaborative production of OER
Sharing practices among teachers in professional communities of practice
Stimulating teachers in reusing, revising, remixing and redistributing of OER

4. Copyright is the right to control the copying and dissemination of an original

work. Where the person wishing to release the OER is the copyright owner of the
entire work, the release of it under a Creative Commons licence is straightforward
simply choose the appropriate CC licence depending on jurisdiction, whether
commercial use is to be permitted, and whether derivatives are to be allowed.
If materials are released as an open educational resource, and they contain material
that is not properly licensed (whether that is text, a graphic, a photograph, video,
music or any other copyright work), reuse of that non-licensed material is likely to be
copyright infringement by any user of the resource. If a successful resource is used
by a thousand people, if infringing material has to be removed, this will affect all
those users (with them having to remove the materials, and having the possibility of
action against them for infringement). This will be the case whether or not they know
that the resource contained copyright infringing material. It is therefore important
that the creator of the OER ensures that it truly is an open resource, by diligently
ensuring that a valid licence is applied to the work.

Ownership of Copyright

The creator of a copyright work is, in general, the first copyright owner of that
work. However, the owner of the work may transfer (the legal term is assign) his or
her ownership to someone else, and that person will become the owner of the
copyright. Only the copyright owner can grant permission (known in law as a
licence) to others to use the work. Permission granted from someone other than the
copyright owner has no validity at all. Although sometimes difficult, an open licence
can only be applied validly to another persons work if the actual copyright owners
permission has been given.

There are particular issues in respect to materials created by a member of staff at a

college or university, or a student. In relation to staff, legislation states that copyright
works created within the course of employment will first belong to the employer,
unless there is an agreement to the contrary. Where material is created within the
course of employment, without agreement to the contrary, a member of staff
authorised to act on behalf of the institution may decide to release that material under
an open licence. Where there is ambiguity (e.g. due to uncertainty as to what duties
are part of the contract of employment), it might be advised to get the approval of the
employee to ensure that the open licence is valid whether it is the member of staff or
the institution that is the copyright owner.
 With regards to students, there are no special legislative provisions. This means that
students will be the owners of their own work, unless they agree to transfer it. Some
institutions have provisions in their registration agreement requiring student to
transfer copyright in all work submitted to the institution. However, such a
requirement is likely to be subject to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts
Regulations 1999, and as such, may be struck down if found to be unfair.

Dealing with Third Party Materials

It should be noted that clearing third party materials for release under an open licence
can be difficult, particularly in relation to multimedia material such as recorded video
(where the soundtrack, performance, screenplay and recording may all have different
rights owners). Where permission is being sought, care should be taken to ensure
that the right person is being asked (that they are actually the copyright owner of the
third party material in question), and that they are truly consenting to the release of
the material under an open licence (for example, merely asking for permission to use
the resources would not be sufficient).

The following are a number of approaches that may be adopted in relation to the third
party materials contained within a candidate resource for release under an open
licence:

Accept the burden of clearing the materials for release under an open licence,
accepting that some owners might refuse, some might ask for payment for permission,
and it may be impossible to track down some owners, or they may not answer your
enquiries.
Remove the third party material, and limit the resource to materials where you are the
copyright owner, or where the third party materials are already available under a
suitable CC licence. This can be extended to third party materials where you know
that gaining permission of the copyright owner will not be burdensome (e.g. copyright
held by a partner institution, or someone easily identifiable that is likely to support the
release of the materials). Where resources have been omitted, it will often be useful
to include a placeholder detailing what material has been removed, and any
information as to how the eventual user of the OER can get permission to use the
removed material him or herself.
Where the decision is to omit third party materials, consideration might be given to
replacing them with materials already licensed under an appropriate CC licence, or
which are otherwise available. This is likely to depend on the pedagogic reason for
inclusion of the work. Substitution will be easier where the inclusion is due to mere
embellishment, or to illustrate a general point, rather than to show something specific.
It may be possible to give access to the resource as a whole, but make clear that
certain parts of it are not CC-licensed. This may be achieved by a caption or other
marker, as long as it is clear to any user that the material in question is not part of the
openly licensed resource. It should be noted that the institution giving access to the
third party material will still need to have permission to do so, even if they are not
giving open reuse access under a CC licence. An approach which might be easier
for a user of OER might be to extract the third party material from the body of the
resource, and include it in an appendix that is clearly marked as being non-CC-
licensed.
 The issues involved with releasing third party material as part of an OER may seem
onerous, tiresome and bureaucratic, but it is a basic tenet of copyright law more or
less the world over that you cannot give away another persons property (including
intellectual property) without their permission. This is unlikely to change in the near
future.

Moral Rights

The original creator of a copyright work has the right, if asserted and subject to
certain other conditions, to be identified as the creator, and also has the right to object
to derogatory treatment of the work. Although these rights may be waived by the
creator, they cannot be transferred to anyone else.

Other Intellectual Property Rights

Care must be taken when releasing open educational resources that confidential
patent-relevant information is not released prior to a patent application (which may be
invalidated as a result). Likewise, consideration should be given as to whether a
trademark is being used in a non-authorised way to promote a good or service without
permission of the trademark owner. There are further, particular, circumstances
where performers rights, database rights and design rights will also need to be
considered, and cleared if necessary.

(Taken from

https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/25308415/Legal%20Aspects%
20of%20OER)

OER are often characterised by use of certain licences, although this is not a part of
their definition. The licencing of OER is rather wide and includes but extends
beyond copyleft and free software. Resources which are widely recognized as OER,
such as MIT's OpenCourseware, use licences such as CC-BY-SA-NC (a Creative
Commons licence which requires attribution, adherence of modifications to the same
licence, and restricts to non-commercial use).

In general, OER tend to carry one of the following licences:

most commonly, any Creative Commons licence

GFDL
public domain

It is conceivable that other licences could be used if they achieved similar results, but
it is considered good practice to aim for compatibility and standardisation with
licensing. The most important criteria of OER licences is that they should permit

o an indefinite chain of distribution without further permission, and,

o promote re-purposing.

However there are no precise definitions.

A higher degree of openness concerning licenses relates to the freedom to make and
redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression.

The Hewlett Foundation definition explicitly lists public domain as a possible

licence.

(Taken from https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources/Copyright)