CREATING, USING AND SHARING 
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
 series
knowledge
S
K N O W L E D G E  S E R I E S
FURTHER REFERENCES (ALL OPENLY LICENSED)
SIMPLE GUIDES
Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. (2011). Guidelines for open educational 
resources (OER) in higher education. Retrieved from www.col.org/
resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364
Kanwar, A., Uvalić-Trumbić, S., & Butcher, N. (2011). A basic guide to open 
educational resources (OER). Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/
publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=357
OAPEN-UK. (n. d.). Creative Commons guide. Retrieved from http://oapen-uk.
jiscebooks.org/ccguide/
Open Knowledge Foundation. (n. d.). Guide to finding interesting public domain 
works online. Retrieved from http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to-
finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/
Prabhala, A. (2010). Copyright and open educational resources. Retrieved from 
www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=323
RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES
Butcher, N., & Hoosen, S. (2012). Exploring the business case for open 
educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/
publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=421 
Commonwealth of Learning. (2012). Fostering governmental support for OER 
internationally. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/
detail.aspx?PID=436 
 Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2013). Open educational resources: An 
Asian perspective. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved 
from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 
Downes, S. (2011, July 18). Open educational resources: A definition. Retrieved 
from www.downes.ca/archive/11/07_18_news_OLDaily.htm 
Glennie, B. J., Harley, K., Butcher, N., & van Wyk, T. (Eds.). (2012). Open 
educational resources and change in higher education: Reflections from 
practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from 
www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 
Hylen, J. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of 
open educational resources. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/
dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf
McGreal, R., Kinutha, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.). ( 2013). Open educational 
resources: Innovation, research and practice. Perspectives on Open and 
Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/
Pages/detail.aspx?PID=447
 OER Knowledge Cloud. A database of more than 600 OER related research 
resources. Retrieved from http://oerknowledgecloud.org
UNESCO. (2012). UNESCO Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources. 
Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/
Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf
CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 
This guide was prepared by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, as part of the 
UNESCO/COL Chair in OER initiative with the help of S. D’Antoni (Athabasca University), 
W. Mackintosh (OER Foundation) and C. Green (Creative Commons).
The Knowledge Series is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery. New titles are published each year.
Editor: Lesley Cameron
Designer: Denise Tremblay
All Web references and links in this publication are accurate at press time.
Commonwealth of Learning, 2013
Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 CANADA 
PH: +1.604.775.8200 | FAX: +1.604.775.8210 | E-MAIL: info@col.org | WEB: www.col.org
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
also available at www.col.org/knowledge
MORE USEFUL REPOSITORIES
Academic Earth houses US college courses.
http://academicearth.org
Ariadne Finder searches a European repository that hosts content 
in many languages.
http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder
Connexions in the US has more than 20,000 OER.
http://cnx.org/
Curriki is a US OER repository with mainly K–12 content.
www.curriki.org
The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is a US government 
search engine. Many resources in this repository are public domain 
but not all. 
http://free.ed.gov
JISC in the UK provides search advice and a list of open and free 
repositories.
www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/finding-video-audio-and-images-
online/#creative-commons
Jorum is a UK Further and Higher Education repository of OER.
http://www.jorum.ac.uk
MERLOT in the US has links to more than 40,000 resources, but some 
are subject to copyright restrictions.
www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
The National Repository of Open Educational Resources in India 
contains a wide variety of OER types.
http://nroer.in/home
OER Knowledge Cloud is a repository of scholarly articles, research 
and reports about OER.
https://oerknowledgecloud.org
Siyavula houses a South African repository of K–12 books in science 
and technology. Sign-up is required.
http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-powered-teaching
Wikiversity links to wiki-based OER in several languages.
www.wikiversity.org
A catalogue of OER repositories is available in Appendix 6 (p. 87) 
of the Commonwealth of Learning’s publication Basic Guide to OER 
www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf
Creative Commons has a page dedicated to open educational 
resources.
http://creativecommons.org/education
Creative Commons has a page that highlights OER case studies.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies
USEFUL TOOLS
CC licence chooser simplifies adding a CC licence notice to a website.
http://creativecommons.org/choose
Compfight allows for searching openly licences photos in Flickr.
http://compfight.com
OpenAttribute consists of a suite of tools that simplifies copying/
pasting the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work.
http://openattribute.com
MOOCS AND OER
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) consist of lessons that are 
freely available to anyone on the Internet, and are accessed by 
large numbers of learners. They are generally not for credit and the 
majority of participants do not commit to the full course, but instead 
participate according to their personal needs and preferences. MOOCs 
have grown out of the online learning movement, but many are not 
quite so “open” and use closed licences. These closed xMOOCs are 
typically for-profit, venture-capital-backed and characterised by 
their focus on knowledge transmission (e.g. video lectures) rather 
than interaction. The original cMOOCs stress connectivity and rely 
on student discoveries, discussions and the shared creation of 
knowledge among participants. However, both types may or may not 
use both open and closed licensed content that is freely accessible 
on the Internet. 
HOW TO FIND OER? A LIST 
OF RESOURCES
OER are available in repositories on the Internet.
SELECT LIST OF SPECIALISED  
SEARCH ENGINES
The Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational 
Resources was designed to aid distance education practitioners in 
particular and it seeks out OER in the major repositories.
http://doer.col.org
Creative Commons Search is not limited to OER and contains links 
to open content of all sorts. 
http://search.creativecommons.org 
http://open4us.org/find-oer 
Google University Learning searches through a collection of OER and 
Open Courseware sites.
https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=00919024379268290399
0:e40rcqv1bbo
OERCommons is a large database of OER with resources suitable for 
a variety of education environments, from K–12 to higher education. 
www.oercommons.org
OER Dynamic Search Engine provides a list of websites that house 
various OER.
http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine
SELECT LIST OF OTHER OER  
SEARCH ENGINES 
Computer Science OER Portal
http://iiscs.wssu.edu/drupal/csoer_collections
OpenTapestry is a repository of OER from Saylor.org and other OER 
sites. It “also provides tools that help organizations easily adopt and 
adapt open courses into existing learning management systems.”
www.opentapestry.com/courses
TEMOA Knowledge Hub is a public multilingual portal searchable by 
subject area or media type. It also includes social networking tools.
www.temoa.info
Xpert can be used to search a database of open learning resources. 
Note that not everything is openly licensed.
www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert
Creating, Using and Sharing 
Open Educational Resources
A  T O P I C A L ,  S T A R T - U P  G U I D E  T O  D I S T A N C E  E D U C A T I O N  P R A C T I C E  A N D  D E L I V E R Y 
YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET
INTRODUCTION
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources 
available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public 
domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many 
formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or 
hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based 
on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a 
whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup-
port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that 
be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi-
nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in 
format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic: 
their openness. 
OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical 
terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of 
their work and can specify how open they want their resources 
to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see 
Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER 
can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners 
and teachers:
• They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of 
the users. 
• They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as 
it becomes known or available. 
• They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ-
isation. 
• They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis-
tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or 
Economics, etc. 
In addition:
• OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and 
programmes. 
• Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on 
different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). 
• Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from 
a variety of sources.
These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from 
creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on 
commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators 
can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible 
content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses 
and programmes. As a start, course designers can begin by “debon-
ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources 
and replacing them with OER. 
WHY OER?
OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important 
for learning. They want to: 
• use affordable (free) learning resources; 
• have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources; 
• have updated content; 
• translate resources into other languages; 
• broaden access to learning; and
• ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to 
the public. 
There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing, which 
is an important component of any educational experience. With OER, 
the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having 
to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover, 
open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an 
OER is reused, revised, remixed or redistributed. Plagiarism becomes 
less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no 
incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also 
an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name 
internationally.
As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps 
increasing. There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects. 
They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not 
only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a 
learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal 
restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly 
structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while 
more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist 
or other approaches. And because OER can be changed to meet the 
needs or requirements of the user, they can be used to support a wide 
range of learning environments. An important benefit of this ability to 
change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising, 
translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts. 
This freedom is also important for the training of course developers 
within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt, 
improve and deploy open content. 
OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces-
sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and 
student completion rates when students can readily access the 
course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER, 
there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of 
the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by 
spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright 
clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER. 
And, most importantly, the active sharing of content among scattered 
institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds 
capacity. For online learning, OER are essential. 
When many different educators are working on developing and 
improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches 
can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and 
can support constant improvement and updating of the resources 
not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes. 
The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development 
of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments 
and essays.
QUALITY OF OER
Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated, but nonethe-
less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER 
content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content. 
The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda-
gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any 
content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a 
particular course, its pedagogical framework and its generalisability. 
Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub-
ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds, 
acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators. User ratings 
are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of 
star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of 
resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards. Also, the brand or 
reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important 
indicator of quality.
Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used 
in evaluating restrictively licensed content. The ability to update content 
in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur-
able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do 
not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by 
the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If 
the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. 
OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is 
shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER 
and receive thousands in return.
COPYRIGHT ISSUES
In the Commonwealth (and the USA), copyright law evolved from the Statute 
of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or “fair use” has been enshrined in copyright law from 
the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing, 
educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively 
licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex-
ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating 
restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be 
avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish 
to share the course materials. 
Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal 
and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can 
even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable 
Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so 
can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos 
for their classroom.
CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE
OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC) 
licence (http://creativecommons.org). This licence gives instructors or their 
institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use 
by others. With CC creators can:
• ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it 
(attribution);
• they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though 
this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want 
to modify the resource) (no derivatives);
• ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed 
(share-alike);
• ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes 
without permission (non-commercial); or, 
• employ any combination of these options.
In addition, many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do-
main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of 
works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70 
years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others.
OER DEVELOPMENT
OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course 
specialists become more familiar with the environment. Most approaches to 
OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to-
face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities 
for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development 
projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom-
mendations, which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance 
education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and 
the strengths and weaknesses of software applications. 
1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING 
RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL.
Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than 
creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible 
OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing 
materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials 
that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and 
create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not 
copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy-
right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access 
resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link.
2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE 
AROUND IT.
This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities 
developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers 
based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined 
the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start 
with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific 
learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional 
approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections 
of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a 
Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com-
puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http://
developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng). Computer Programming instructors 
could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are 
available online. How about a history-teaching module based on the openly 
licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)?
3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH.
Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch 
is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources 
can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on 
adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often 
preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of 
modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external 
resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in 
a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the 
maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules 
can be used to promote effective learning experiences.
4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY 
BORROWED FROM THERE.”
Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can 
find fault with any course material. “Turf protection” is alive and kicking in 
many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else 
is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s 
course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense 
and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the 
only people who care about “perfection” are the curriculum specialists 
themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative 
merits of different approaches, techniques and content. 
It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt 
outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions. 
Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more 
suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of 
specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate 
pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students 
to use different devices. Course materials must be reusable and adapt-
able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules. 
5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING. 
GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS.
OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course 
materials’ content, features and functionality. They are normally self-
contained and portable to different environments. The costs of overall 
development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and 
available for use in multiple subject areas and formats. This approach 
also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier. 
Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their 
course structures. This is unfortunate, because many materials could 
be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example, 
if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation 
into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of 
visual impairment.
6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES.
Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of 
the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people 
access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by 
any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the 
developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop 
use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that 
is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units.
7. BUILD TO STANDARDS.
When the technical resources are available, course materials should 
be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the 
resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources 
should conform to the international metadata standards for learning 
objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can 
implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create 
a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your 
institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of 
instructions, use of icons, etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons 
licence to your resources. This can be done easily using the Creative 
Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/).
Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it 
simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple 
commands and easily understandable icons. Simple, clean interfaces 
with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and 
whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language. 
Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives 
page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it!
David Wiley
PROBLEMS WITH  
COMMERCIAL CONTENT
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT  
(OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION 
MEASURES)
Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for 
OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures 
that disable many functions and that are commonly known 
as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically 
control how, when, where and with what specific brands 
of technological assistance users can access content and 
applications. These restrictions include:
• restricting accessibility to one format and one 
device;
• disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and 
printing options;
• disabling audio and video applications used by those 
with audio or visual impairments;
• prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug-
menting of the resource;
• geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot 
be used outside of a certain region; and
• removing content when monthly payments stop or 
licences expire or at the company’s discretion.
RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
When you click on many, if not most, licences for commercial 
content, you have agreed that:
• you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM 
restrictions;
• you cannot share the content with anyone else;
• you do not buy the product but merely purchase the 
privilege of using it;
• you waive any rights including ownership, resale and 
fair dealing or fair use rights;
• the owner can control how, when and where you 
access the resource;
• the owner has the right to access your device and 
disable applications;
• the owner can access and use your personal data 
without further permission;
• you accept that the company has no liability to 
ensure that the product works; and
• you accept that the licence can be changed by the 
company at any time.
With OER, you have none of these technical and legal 
restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education.
OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and 
should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different 
devices, operating systems and applications. 
YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET
INTRODUCTION
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources 
available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public 
domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many 
formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or 
hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based 
on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a 
whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup-
port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that 
be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi-
nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in 
format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic: 
their openness. 
OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical 
terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of 
their work and can specify how open they want their resources 
to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see 
Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER 
can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners 
and teachers:
• They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of 
the users. 
• They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as 
it becomes known or available. 
• They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ-
isation. 
• They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis-
tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or 
Economics, etc. 
In addition:
• OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and 
programmes. 
• Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on 
different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). 
• Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from 
a variety of sources.
These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from 
creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on 
commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators 
can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible 
content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses 
and programmes. As a start, course designers can begin by “debon-
ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources 
and replacing them with OER. 
WHY OER?
OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important 
for learning. They want to: 
• use affordable (free) learning resources; 
• have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources; 
• have updated content; 
• translate resources into other languages; 
• broaden access to learning; and
• ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to 
the public. 
There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing, which 
is an important component of any educational experience. With OER, 
the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having 
to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover, 
open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an 
OER is reused, revised, remixed or redistributed. Plagiarism becomes 
less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no 
incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also 
an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name 
internationally.
As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps 
increasing. There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects. 
They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not 
only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a 
learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal 
restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly 
structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while 
more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist 
or other approaches. And because OER can be changed to meet the 
needs or requirements of the user, they can be used to support a wide 
range of learning environments. An important benefit of this ability to 
change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising, 
translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts. 
This freedom is also important for the training of course developers 
within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt, 
improve and deploy open content. 
OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces-
sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and 
student completion rates when students can readily access the 
course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER, 
there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of 
the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by 
spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright 
clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER. 
And, most importantly, the active sharing of content among scattered 
institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds 
capacity. For online learning, OER are essential. 
When many different educators are working on developing and 
improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches 
can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and 
can support constant improvement and updating of the resources 
not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes. 
The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development 
of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments 
and essays.
QUALITY OF OER
Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated, but nonethe-
less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER 
content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content. 
The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda-
gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any 
content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a 
particular course, its pedagogical framework and its generalisability. 
Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub-
ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds, 
acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators. User ratings 
are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of 
star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of 
resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards. Also, the brand or 
reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important 
indicator of quality.
Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used 
in evaluating restrictively licensed content. The ability to update content 
in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur-
able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do 
not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by 
the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If 
the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. 
OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is 
shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER 
and receive thousands in return.
COPYRIGHT ISSUES
In the Commonwealth (and the USA), copyright law evolved from the Statute 
of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or “fair use” has been enshrined in copyright law from 
the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing, 
educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively 
licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex-
ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating 
restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be 
avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish 
to share the course materials. 
Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal 
and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can 
even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable 
Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so 
can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos 
for their classroom.
CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE
OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC) 
licence (http://creativecommons.org). This licence gives instructors or their 
institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use 
by others. With CC creators can:
• ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it 
(attribution);
• they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though 
this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want 
to modify the resource) (no derivatives);
• ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed 
(share-alike);
• ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes 
without permission (non-commercial); or, 
• employ any combination of these options.
In addition, many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do-
main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of 
works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70 
years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others.
OER DEVELOPMENT
OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course 
specialists become more familiar with the environment. Most approaches to 
OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to-
face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities 
for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development 
projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom-
mendations, which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance 
education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and 
the strengths and weaknesses of software applications. 
1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING 
RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL.
Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than 
creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible 
OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing 
materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials 
that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and 
create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not 
copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy-
right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access 
resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link.
2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE 
AROUND IT.
This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities 
developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers 
based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined 
the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start 
with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific 
learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional 
approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections 
of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a 
Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com-
puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http://
developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng). Computer Programming instructors 
could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are 
available online. How about a history-teaching module based on the openly 
licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)?
3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH.
Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch 
is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources 
can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on 
adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often 
preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of 
modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external 
resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in 
a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the 
maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules 
can be used to promote effective learning experiences.
4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY 
BORROWED FROM THERE.”
Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can 
find fault with any course material. “Turf protection” is alive and kicking in 
many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else 
is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s 
course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense 
and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the 
only people who care about “perfection” are the curriculum specialists 
themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative 
merits of different approaches, techniques and content. 
It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt 
outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions. 
Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more 
suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of 
specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate 
pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students 
to use different devices. Course materials must be reusable and adapt-
able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules. 
5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING. 
GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS.
OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course 
materials’ content, features and functionality. They are normally self-
contained and portable to different environments. The costs of overall 
development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and 
available for use in multiple subject areas and formats. This approach 
also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier. 
Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their 
course structures. This is unfortunate, because many materials could 
be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example, 
if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation 
into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of 
visual impairment.
6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES.
Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of 
the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people 
access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by 
any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the 
developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop 
use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that 
is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units.
7. BUILD TO STANDARDS.
When the technical resources are available, course materials should 
be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the 
resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources 
should conform to the international metadata standards for learning 
objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can 
implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create 
a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your 
institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of 
instructions, use of icons, etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons 
licence to your resources. This can be done easily using the Creative 
Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/).
Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it 
simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple 
commands and easily understandable icons. Simple, clean interfaces 
with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and 
whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language. 
Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives 
page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it!
David Wiley
PROBLEMS WITH  
COMMERCIAL CONTENT
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT  
(OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION 
MEASURES)
Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for 
OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures 
that disable many functions and that are commonly known 
as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically 
control how, when, where and with what specific brands 
of technological assistance users can access content and 
applications. These restrictions include:
• restricting accessibility to one format and one 
device;
• disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and 
printing options;
• disabling audio and video applications used by those 
with audio or visual impairments;
• prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug-
menting of the resource;
• geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot 
be used outside of a certain region; and
• removing content when monthly payments stop or 
licences expire or at the company’s discretion.
RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
When you click on many, if not most, licences for commercial 
content, you have agreed that:
• you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM 
restrictions;
• you cannot share the content with anyone else;
• you do not buy the product but merely purchase the 
privilege of using it;
• you waive any rights including ownership, resale and 
fair dealing or fair use rights;
• the owner can control how, when and where you 
access the resource;
• the owner has the right to access your device and 
disable applications;
• the owner can access and use your personal data 
without further permission;
• you accept that the company has no liability to 
ensure that the product works; and
• you accept that the licence can be changed by the 
company at any time.
With OER, you have none of these technical and legal 
restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education.
OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and 
should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different 
devices, operating systems and applications. 
YOU BUY BUT YOU DON’T GET
INTRODUCTION
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free learning resources 
available on the Internet. OER can be openly licensed or in the public 
domain, and can be used or reused for free. They can exist in many 
formats: text (either print or digital); audio, video, multimedia or 
hypermedia; or various combinations of these. They can be based 
on a single learning point, a lesson, a series of lessons (a module), a 
whole course or even an entire programme of study. They can sup-
port a specific learning methodology or approach — whether that 
be behaviourist, constructivist, connectivist, etc. — or any combi-
nation of methodologies or approaches. Although they may differ in 
format, structure or approach, they share a common characteristic: 
their openness. 
OER are also open (mostly). What does that mean in practical 
terms? With an open licence, the creators retain ownership of 
their work and can specify how open they want their resources 
to be, from fully open to closed for specific purposes (see 
Creative Commons, below). Unlike commercial resources, OER 
can be used and reused as needed and/or desired by learners 
and teachers:
• They can be edited to reflect the styles and approaches of 
the users. 
• They can be augmented by the insertion of new material as 
it becomes known or available. 
• They can be customised to reflect the ethos of your organ-
isation. 
• They can be repurposed. For example, a Sociology statis-
tics package can be adapted for Psychology or Nursing or 
Economics, etc. 
In addition:
• OER can be combined to assemble lessons, courses and 
programmes. 
• Content can be reformatted to make it suitable for use on 
different devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). 
• Mash-ups can be created by using blended resources from 
a variety of sources.
These characteristics of OER make possible a shift away from 
creating courses to assembling them. Rather than depending on 
commercial textbooks to develop courses from scratch, educators 
can gather together OER from a variety of sources, using accessible 
content from the Internet, and assemble them into lessons, courses 
and programmes. As a start, course designers can begin by “debon-
ing” their courses — that is, removing the commercial resources 
and replacing them with OER. 
WHY OER?
OER are supported by educators who believe that sharing is important 
for learning. They want to: 
• use affordable (free) learning resources; 
• have the legal rights to use these (free) learning resources; 
• have updated content; 
• translate resources into other languages; 
• broaden access to learning; and
• ensure publicly funded educational resources are available to 
the public. 
There are many benefits to using OER in addition to sharing, which 
is an important component of any educational experience. With OER, 
the author retains ownership of his or her copyright without having 
to assign it to a publisher, so author rights are preserved. Moreover, 
open licences require that attribution be given to the author when an 
OER is reused, revised, remixed or redistributed. Plagiarism becomes 
less of a problem when a work can be freely copied — there is no 
incentive to lie about the source or to deny attribution. OER are also 
an excellent way of marketing an institution and spreading its name 
internationally.
As more and more educators learn about OER, the supply keeps 
increasing. There are now large numbers of OER on many subjects. 
They are becoming more relevant and their quality is improving. Not 
only are OER free of cost, they are also free to use in any way that a 
learner or instructor desires and are free of technological and legal 
restrictions, so no time has to be spent seeking permissions. Highly 
structured OER can support traditional teaching methods, while 
more open examples lend themselves to constructivist, connectivist 
or other approaches. And because OER can be changed to meet the 
needs or requirements of the user, they can be used to support a wide 
range of learning environments. An important benefit of this ability to 
change OER is that it facilitates timely updating as well as localising, 
translating and otherwise adapting the material to specific contexts. 
This freedom is also important for the training of course developers 
within institutions as more instructors learn how to access, adapt, 
improve and deploy open content. 
OER are not only a good thing because they are free and acces-
sible. They have also been linked to improved achievement and 
student completion rates when students can readily access the 
course material. With global sharing, which is facilitated by OER, 
there is less and less unnecessary duplication or “reinventing of 
the wheel.” Sharing reduces the cost of course development by 
spreading materials among many different institutions. Copyright 
clearance, which can be quite laborious, is eliminated with OER. 
And, most importantly, the active sharing of content among scattered 
institutions and jurisdictions engages open communities and builds 
capacity. For online learning, OER are essential. 
When many different educators are working on developing and 
improving curricula, many divergent techniques and approaches 
can be experimented with. This can be an ongoing exercise and 
can support constant improvement and updating of the resources 
not only for lessons and courses but also for entire programmes. 
The talents of those involved can be pooled in the development 
of assessment tools such as examinations, tests, assignments 
and essays.
QUALITY OF OER
Concerns about the quality of OER are often overstated, but nonethe-
less must be addressed. The most obvious way of evaluating OER 
content is the same as for evaluating restrictively licensed content. 
The instructor validates the content, and tests its potential peda-
gogical effectiveness and ease of use. The perceived quality of any 
content can vary considerably depending on its purpose and fit with a 
particular course, its pedagogical framework and its generalisability. 
Peer review is used at times to validate quality. A few sub-
ject matter experts all certifying that content meets, or exceeds, 
acceptable criteria is one of the best quality indicators. User ratings 
are used in some sites, and can be useful; they are usually in the form of 
star ratings or numbers. Instructors can also conduct self-evaluations of 
resources to ensure that the quality meets their standards. Also, the brand or 
reputation of the course developers or their institutions can be an important 
indicator of quality.
Of course, the above quality indicators can and should also be used 
in evaluating restrictively licensed content. The ability to update content 
in a timely fashion without restriction gives OER a significant measur-
able quality advantage over closed content. Commercial vendors do 
not allow users to modify their content and so it cannot be updated by 
the users. Cost is another important variable in evaluating quality. If 
the content is too costly and essentially unaffordable, it is not useful. 
OER are free of charge and the costs of developing content as OER is 
shared among many institutions. An institution may develop one OER 
and receive thousands in return.
COPYRIGHT ISSUES
In the Commonwealth (and the USA), copyright law evolved from the Statute 
of Queen Anne, 1710, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning (http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne). Fair dealing (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fair_dealing) or “fair use” has been enshrined in copyright law from 
the beginning, particularly for research and education. Under fair dealing, 
educators have every right to use “a reasonable amount” of restrictively 
licensed content in their course packs or websites. (Analogous rights ex-
ist in other legal traditions.) However, please be careful when integrating 
restrictively licensed content. The use of this “closed” content should be 
avoided whenever possible as it can create problems for others who wish 
to share the course materials. 
Linking to any content that is freely displayed on the Internet is legal 
and can be an excellent way of supplementing course material. Links can 
even be integrated into a course if the students have reasonably reliable 
Internet connections. Some YouTube videos are also openly licensed and so 
can be remixed inside YouTube, allowing teachers to create custom videos 
for their classroom.
CREATIVE COMMONS (CC) LICENCE
OER can usually be identified by their use of a Creative Commons (CC) 
licence (http://creativecommons.org). This licence gives instructors or their 
institutions copyright over their resources, while opening them up for use 
by others. With CC creators can:
• ensure that their name remains with the work when others use it 
(attribution);
• they can ensure that their work remains in its original form (though 
this restriction is not ideal for education as other teachers may want 
to modify the resource) (no derivatives);
• ensure that any changes to the work must also be openly licensed 
(share-alike);
• ensure that the resource cannot be used for commercial purposes 
without permission (non-commercial); or, 
• employ any combination of these options.
In addition, many public domain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_do-
main) materials are also available for use as OER. These consist mainly of 
works where the author died before the 1940s in most jurisdictions (life +70 
years), the 1960s (life +50 years) in others.
OER DEVELOPMENT
OER development is becoming more sophisticated as instructors and course 
specialists become more familiar with the environment. Most approaches to 
OER creation have been developed from the approaches used for face-to-
face learning. However, the online environment opens up new possibilities 
for learning. When initiating and supporting OER assembly/development 
projects, OER users may want to bear in mind the following list of recom-
mendations, which draws on direct knowledge of and experience in distance 
education and traditional learning, adapting to the online environment and 
the strengths and weaknesses of software applications. 
1. BEG OR BORROW (OR STEAL!) LEARNING 
RESOURCES. DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL.
Using previously created materials is almost always more efficient than 
creating your own. Take advantage of the freely and legally accessible 
OER that are accessible online. It is almost always easier to adapt existing 
materials to your needs than to develop them yourself. If course materials 
that you like are not available as OER, you can always take the idea and 
create your own content. You can make an OER. Remember, ideas are not 
copyrightable, only the specific expression of an idea is protected by copy-
right. If no OER are available you can also use fair dealing rights to access 
resources up to a reasonable amount or simply create a link.
2. TAKE WHAT EXISTS AND BUILD THE COURSE 
AROUND IT.
This is a tried and true approach to course development. Early universities 
developed around monasteries or religious study groups, where teachers 
based their lessons on traditional texts — that is, the content determined 
the learning. Now, many instructional design manuals insist that you start 
with a needs analysis and build your course materials based on the specific 
learner needs. While this approach has value, so does the more traditional 
approach. Instructors can construct relevant courses, or relevant sections 
of courses, based on materials that are already available. For example, a 
Geography instructor could design specific relevant tasks around a com-
puter game or a computer simulation on running a city like Lincity (http://
developer.berlios.de/projects/lincity-ng). Computer Programming instructors 
could refer students to specific free courses on Java programming that are 
available online. How about a history-teaching module based on the openly 
licensed ancient history game 0.A.D. (http://play0ad.com)?
3. ASSEMBLE. DON’T CREATE. MIX AND MATCH.
Assembling courses rather than creating or developing them from scratch 
is enabled by OER. Mixing and matching modules from different sources 
can be more effective than creating them or spending too much time on 
adapting materials to make them “just right.” “Good enough” is often 
preferable to “perfect” if it saves time and resources. The integration of 
modules can often take up more time than it is worth. Linking to external 
resources can also be effective. Everything does not have to be housed in 
a consistent look. Learning effectiveness is not always dependent on the 
maintenance of an “integrated whole.” Seemingly disconnected modules 
can be used to promote effective learning experiences.
4. MOVE FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY 
BORROWED FROM THERE.”
Curriculum specialists, instructional designers and individual teachers can 
find fault with any course material. “Turf protection” is alive and kicking in 
many learning institutions. Material developed or chosen by someone else 
is all too often judged to be inferior. Sometimes settling for someone else’s 
course material that is “good enough” is better than going to the expense 
and effort of creating your own “perfect” materials. Quite often the 
only people who care about “perfection” are the curriculum specialists 
themselves — and they can spend years arguing over the relative 
merits of different approaches, techniques and content. 
It is pedagogically justifiable and often most appropriate to adopt 
outright or adapt an entire course produced by other institutions. 
Specific modules on relevant course topics can sometimes be more 
suitable. Externally produced OER can form the component parts of 
specific modules or larger courses. Often they can serve as alternate 
pathways to accommodate differing learning styles or to allow students 
to use different devices. Course materials must be reusable and adapt-
able for repurposing. To facilitate this, organise lessons as modules. 
5. BUILD FLEXIBLY FOR REUSE AND REPURPOSING. 
GENERALISABILITY REDUCES COSTS.
OER can facilitate change in the type and amount of your course 
materials’ content, features and functionality. They are normally self-
contained and portable to different environments. The costs of overall 
development are reduced significantly when materials are generic and 
available for use in multiple subject areas and formats. This approach 
also makes ongoing maintenance and error correction much easier. 
Too many designers do not allow for multilingual capacity in their 
course structures. This is unfortunate, because many materials could 
be easily translated if the course structure were open. For example, 
if text is not used inside graphics, there is an option for translation 
into other languages and access by persons with varying degrees of 
visual impairment.
6. DESIGN FOR USE ON MOBILE DEVICES.
Mobile devices are becoming very popular. More than 90 per cent of 
the world’s population can now access mobile signals. More people 
access the Internet using mobile phones and tablet computers than by 
any other means, including desktops. So, when developing OER, the 
developers should recognise this and design not for paper or desktop 
use, but for mobile device use. This may involve “chunking” — that 
is, dividing lessons into smaller, more manageable units.
7. BUILD TO STANDARDS.
When the technical resources are available, course materials should 
be built to commonly accepted technical standards to make the 
resources easier to assemble, adapt and repurpose. Resources 
should conform to the international metadata standards for learning 
objects and course packaging (IEEE LOM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Learning_object_metadata], SCORM [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scorm], IMS Common Cartridge [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Common_cartridge#Common_Cartridge]). As well, institutions can 
implement local standards for interface design and quality. Create 
a standard procedure and “look” for course development in your 
institution and follow it intelligently. Be consistent in the wording of 
instructions, use of icons, etc. And be sure to add a Creative Commons 
licence to your resources. This can be done easily using the Creative 
Commons tool (http://creativecommons.org/choose/).
Most importantly, when assembling or building courses: Keep it 
simple. Do not make the interface difficult to navigate. Use simple 
commands and easily understandable icons. Simple, clean interfaces 
with no glitz are preferable to overly complex designs with bells and 
whistles. Make it easy for the learner. Use plain, simple language. 
Explicitly state the course objectives on a separate course objectives 
page. And lastly, don’t procrastinate. Just do it!
David Wiley
PROBLEMS WITH  
COMMERCIAL CONTENT
DRM = DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT  
(OR TPM, TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION 
MEASURES)
Commercial content can be expensive, but the real need for 
OER is driven by DRM, the technical protection measures 
that disable many functions and that are commonly known 
as “digital locks.” Commercial publishers can technically 
control how, when, where and with what specific brands 
of technological assistance users can access content and 
applications. These restrictions include:
• restricting accessibility to one format and one 
device;
• disabling highlighting, annotating, hyperlinking and 
printing options;
• disabling audio and video applications used by those 
with audio or visual impairments;
• prohibiting the reuse, mixing and matching or aug-
menting of the resource;
• geographic restrictions whereby resources cannot 
be used outside of a certain region; and
• removing content when monthly payments stop or 
licences expire or at the company’s discretion.
RESTRICTIVE LICENSING
When you click on many, if not most, licences for commercial 
content, you have agreed that:
• you accept many, if not all, of the above DRM 
restrictions;
• you cannot share the content with anyone else;
• you do not buy the product but merely purchase the 
privilege of using it;
• you waive any rights including ownership, resale and 
fair dealing or fair use rights;
• the owner can control how, when and where you 
access the resource;
• the owner has the right to access your device and 
disable applications;
• the owner can access and use your personal data 
without further permission;
• you accept that the company has no liability to 
ensure that the product works; and
• you accept that the licence can be changed by the 
company at any time.
With OER, you have none of these technical and legal 
restrictions. That is why OER are essential in education.
OER are reusable; are adaptable to many learning contexts and environments; and 
should be interoperable in different formats (including print) as well as on different 
devices, operating systems and applications. 
CREATING, USING AND SHARING 
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
 series
knowledge
S
K N O W L E D G E  S E R I E S
FURTHER REFERENCES (ALL OPENLY LICENSED)
SIMPLE GUIDES
Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. (2011). Guidelines for open educational 
resources (OER) in higher education. Retrieved from www.col.org/
resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364
Kanwar, A., Uvalić-Trumbić, S., & Butcher, N. (2011). A basic guide to open 
educational resources (OER). Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/
publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=357
OAPEN-UK. (n. d.). Creative Commons guide. Retrieved from http://oapen-uk.
jiscebooks.org/ccguide/
Open Knowledge Foundation. (n. d.). Guide to finding interesting public domain 
works online. Retrieved from http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to-
finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/
Prabhala, A. (2010). Copyright and open educational resources. Retrieved from 
www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=323
RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES
Butcher, N., & Hoosen, S. (2012). Exploring the business case for open 
educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/
publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=421 
Commonwealth of Learning. (2012). Fostering governmental support for OER 
internationally. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/
detail.aspx?PID=436 
 Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2013). Open educational resources: An 
Asian perspective. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved 
from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 
Downes, S. (2011, July 18). Open educational resources: A definition. Retrieved 
from www.downes.ca/archive/11/07_18_news_OLDaily.htm 
Glennie, B. J., Harley, K., Butcher, N., & van Wyk, T. (Eds.). (2012). Open 
educational resources and change in higher education: Reflections from 
practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from 
www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 
Hylen, J. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of 
open educational resources. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/
dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf
McGreal, R., Kinutha, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.). ( 2013). Open educational 
resources: Innovation, research and practice. Perspectives on Open and 
Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/
Pages/detail.aspx?PID=447
 OER Knowledge Cloud. A database of more than 600 OER related research 
resources. Retrieved from http://oerknowledgecloud.org
UNESCO. (2012). UNESCO Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources. 
Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/
Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf
CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 
This guide was prepared by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, as part of the 
UNESCO/COL Chair in OER initiative with the help of S. D’Antoni (Athabasca University), 
W. Mackintosh (OER Foundation) and C. Green (Creative Commons).
The Knowledge Series is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery. New titles are published each year.
Editor: Lesley Cameron
Designer: Denise Tremblay
All Web references and links in this publication are accurate at press time.
Commonwealth of Learning, 2013
Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 CANADA 
PH: +1.604.775.8200 | FAX: +1.604.775.8210 | E-MAIL: info@col.org | WEB: www.col.org
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
also available at www.col.org/knowledge
MORE USEFUL REPOSITORIES
Academic Earth houses US college courses.
http://academicearth.org
Ariadne Finder searches a European repository that hosts content 
in many languages.
http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder
Connexions in the US has more than 20,000 OER.
http://cnx.org/
Curriki is a US OER repository with mainly K–12 content.
www.curriki.org
The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is a US government 
search engine. Many resources in this repository are public domain 
but not all. 
http://free.ed.gov
JISC in the UK provides search advice and a list of open and free 
repositories.
www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/finding-video-audio-and-images-
online/#creative-commons
Jorum is a UK Further and Higher Education repository of OER.
http://www.jorum.ac.uk
MERLOT in the US has links to more than 40,000 resources, but some 
are subject to copyright restrictions.
www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
The National Repository of Open Educational Resources in India 
contains a wide variety of OER types.
http://nroer.in/home
OER Knowledge Cloud is a repository of scholarly articles, research 
and reports about OER.
https://oerknowledgecloud.org
Siyavula houses a South African repository of K–12 books in science 
and technology. Sign-up is required.
http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-powered-teaching
Wikiversity links to wiki-based OER in several languages.
www.wikiversity.org
A catalogue of OER repositories is available in Appendix 6 (p. 87) 
of the Commonwealth of Learning’s publication Basic Guide to OER 
www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf
Creative Commons has a page dedicated to open educational 
resources.
http://creativecommons.org/education
Creative Commons has a page that highlights OER case studies.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies
USEFUL TOOLS
CC licence chooser simplifies adding a CC licence notice to a website.
http://creativecommons.org/choose
Compfight allows for searching openly licences photos in Flickr.
http://compfight.com
OpenAttribute consists of a suite of tools that simplifies copying/
pasting the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work.
http://openattribute.com
MOOCS AND OER
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) consist of lessons that are 
freely available to anyone on the Internet, and are accessed by 
large numbers of learners. They are generally not for credit and the 
majority of participants do not commit to the full course, but instead 
participate according to their personal needs and preferences. MOOCs 
have grown out of the online learning movement, but many are not 
quite so “open” and use closed licences. These closed xMOOCs are 
typically for-profit, venture-capital-backed and characterised by 
their focus on knowledge transmission (e.g. video lectures) rather 
than interaction. The original cMOOCs stress connectivity and rely 
on student discoveries, discussions and the shared creation of 
knowledge among participants. However, both types may or may not 
use both open and closed licensed content that is freely accessible 
on the Internet. 
HOW TO FIND OER? A LIST 
OF RESOURCES
OER are available in repositories on the Internet.
SELECT LIST OF SPECIALISED  
SEARCH ENGINES
The Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational 
Resources was designed to aid distance education practitioners in 
particular and it seeks out OER in the major repositories.
http://doer.col.org
Creative Commons Search is not limited to OER and contains links 
to open content of all sorts. 
http://search.creativecommons.org 
http://open4us.org/find-oer 
Google University Learning searches through a collection of OER and 
Open Courseware sites.
https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=00919024379268290399
0:e40rcqv1bbo
OERCommons is a large database of OER with resources suitable for 
a variety of education environments, from K–12 to higher education. 
www.oercommons.org
OER Dynamic Search Engine provides a list of websites that house 
various OER.
http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine
SELECT LIST OF OTHER OER  
SEARCH ENGINES 
Computer Science OER Portal
http://iiscs.wssu.edu/drupal/csoer_collections
OpenTapestry is a repository of OER from Saylor.org and other OER 
sites. It “also provides tools that help organizations easily adopt and 
adapt open courses into existing learning management systems.”
www.opentapestry.com/courses
TEMOA Knowledge Hub is a public multilingual portal searchable by 
subject area or media type. It also includes social networking tools.
www.temoa.info
Xpert can be used to search a database of open learning resources. 
Note that not everything is openly licensed.
www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert
Creating, Using and Sharing 
Open Educational Resources
A  T O P I C A L ,  S T A R T - U P  G U I D E  T O  D I S T A N C E  E D U C A T I O N  P R A C T I C E  A N D  D E L I V E R Y 
CREATING, USING AND SHARING 
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
 series
knowledge
S
K N O W L E D G E  S E R I E S
FURTHER REFERENCES (ALL OPENLY LICENSED)
SIMPLE GUIDES
Commonwealth of Learning & UNESCO. (2011). Guidelines for open educational 
resources (OER) in higher education. Retrieved from www.col.org/
resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=364
Kanwar, A., Uvalić-Trumbić, S., & Butcher, N. (2011). A basic guide to open 
educational resources (OER). Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/
publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=357
OAPEN-UK. (n. d.). Creative Commons guide. Retrieved from http://oapen-uk.
jiscebooks.org/ccguide/
Open Knowledge Foundation. (n. d.). Guide to finding interesting public domain 
works online. Retrieved from http://publicdomainreview.org/guide-to-
finding-interesting-public-domain-works-online/
Prabhala, A. (2010). Copyright and open educational resources. Retrieved from 
www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=323
RESEARCH AND IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCES
Butcher, N., & Hoosen, S. (2012). Exploring the business case for open 
educational resources. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/
publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=421 
Commonwealth of Learning. (2012). Fostering governmental support for OER 
internationally. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/
detail.aspx?PID=436 
 Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (Eds.). (2013). Open educational resources: An 
Asian perspective. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved 
from www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=441 
Downes, S. (2011, July 18). Open educational resources: A definition. Retrieved 
from www.downes.ca/archive/11/07_18_news_OLDaily.htm 
Glennie, B. J., Harley, K., Butcher, N., & van Wyk, T. (Eds.). (2012). Open 
educational resources and change in higher education: Reflections from 
practice. Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning. Retrieved from 
www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412 
Hylen, J. (2007). Giving knowledge for free: The emergence of 
open educational resources. Retrieved from www.oecd.org/
dataoecd/35/7/38654317.pdf
McGreal, R., Kinutha, W., & Marshall, S. (Eds.). ( 2013). Open educational 
resources: Innovation, research and practice. Perspectives on Open and 
Distance Learning. Retrieved from www.col.org/resources/publications/
Pages/detail.aspx?PID=447
 OER Knowledge Cloud. A database of more than 600 OER related research 
resources. Retrieved from http://oerknowledgecloud.org
UNESCO. (2012). UNESCO Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources. 
Retrieved from www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/
Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf
CREATING, USING AND SHARING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES 
This guide was prepared by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/COL Chair in OER, as part of the 
UNESCO/COL Chair in OER initiative with the help of S. D’Antoni (Athabasca University), 
W. Mackintosh (OER Foundation) and C. Green (Creative Commons).
The Knowledge Series is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery. New titles are published each year.
Editor: Lesley Cameron
Designer: Denise Tremblay
All Web references and links in this publication are accurate at press time.
Commonwealth of Learning, 2013
Commonwealth of Learning, 1055 West Hastings, Suite 1200, Vancouver, BC V6E 2E9 CANADA 
PH: +1.604.775.8200 | FAX: +1.604.775.8210 | E-MAIL: info@col.org | WEB: www.col.org
PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER
also available at www.col.org/knowledge
MORE USEFUL REPOSITORIES
Academic Earth houses US college courses.
http://academicearth.org
Ariadne Finder searches a European repository that hosts content 
in many languages.
http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/AriadneFinder
Connexions in the US has more than 20,000 OER.
http://cnx.org/
Curriki is a US OER repository with mainly K–12 content.
www.curriki.org
The Federal Registry for Educational Excellence is a US government 
search engine. Many resources in this repository are public domain 
but not all. 
http://free.ed.gov
JISC in the UK provides search advice and a list of open and free 
repositories.
www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/finding-video-audio-and-images-
online/#creative-commons
Jorum is a UK Further and Higher Education repository of OER.
http://www.jorum.ac.uk
MERLOT in the US has links to more than 40,000 resources, but some 
are subject to copyright restrictions.
www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
The National Repository of Open Educational Resources in India 
contains a wide variety of OER types.
http://nroer.in/home
OER Knowledge Cloud is a repository of scholarly articles, research 
and reports about OER.
https://oerknowledgecloud.org
Siyavula houses a South African repository of K–12 books in science 
and technology. Sign-up is required.
http://projects.siyavula.com/technology-powered-teaching
Wikiversity links to wiki-based OER in several languages.
www.wikiversity.org
A catalogue of OER repositories is available in Appendix 6 (p. 87) 
of the Commonwealth of Learning’s publication Basic Guide to OER 
www.col.org/PublicationDocuments/Basic-Guide-To-OER.pdf
Creative Commons has a page dedicated to open educational 
resources.
http://creativecommons.org/education
Creative Commons has a page that highlights OER case studies.
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies
USEFUL TOOLS
CC licence chooser simplifies adding a CC licence notice to a website.
http://creativecommons.org/choose
Compfight allows for searching openly licences photos in Flickr.
http://compfight.com
OpenAttribute consists of a suite of tools that simplifies copying/
pasting the correct attribution for any CC-licensed work.
http://openattribute.com
MOOCS AND OER
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) consist of lessons that are 
freely available to anyone on the Internet, and are accessed by 
large numbers of learners. They are generally not for credit and the 
majority of participants do not commit to the full course, but instead 
participate according to their personal needs and preferences. MOOCs 
have grown out of the online learning movement, but many are not 
quite so “open” and use closed licences. These closed xMOOCs are 
typically for-profit, venture-capital-backed and characterised by 
their focus on knowledge transmission (e.g. video lectures) rather 
than interaction. The original cMOOCs stress connectivity and rely 
on student discoveries, discussions and the shared creation of 
knowledge among participants. However, both types may or may not 
use both open and closed licensed content that is freely accessible 
on the Internet. 
HOW TO FIND OER? A LIST 
OF RESOURCES
OER are available in repositories on the Internet.
SELECT LIST OF SPECIALISED  
SEARCH ENGINES
The Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational 
Resources was designed to aid distance education practitioners in 
particular and it seeks out OER in the major repositories.
http://doer.col.org
Creative Commons Search is not limited to OER and contains links 
to open content of all sorts. 
http://search.creativecommons.org 
http://open4us.org/find-oer 
Google University Learning searches through a collection of OER and 
Open Courseware sites.
https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=00919024379268290399
0:e40rcqv1bbo
OERCommons is a large database of OER with resources suitable for 
a variety of education environments, from K–12 to higher education. 
www.oercommons.org
OER Dynamic Search Engine provides a list of websites that house 
various OER.
http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine
SELECT LIST OF OTHER OER  
SEARCH ENGINES 
Computer Science OER Portal
http://iiscs.wssu.edu/drupal/csoer_collections
OpenTapestry is a repository of OER from Saylor.org and other OER 
sites. It “also provides tools that help organizations easily adopt and 
adapt open courses into existing learning management systems.”
www.opentapestry.com/courses
TEMOA Knowledge Hub is a public multilingual portal searchable by 
subject area or media type. It also includes social networking tools.
www.temoa.info
Xpert can be used to search a database of open learning resources. 
Note that not everything is openly licensed.
www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert
Creating, Using and Sharing 
Open Educational Resources
A  T O P I C A L ,  S T A R T - U P  G U I D E  T O  D I S T A N C E  E D U C A T I O N  P R A C T I C E  A N D  D E L I V E R Y