Week 6 OER and Creative Commons

Introduction

Figure 1 When looking for an image or other resource, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel – check what is available in open educational resources (OER) before making something new.

Show description|Hide description

A drawing of a small square-shaped grey wheel and a big colourful wheel to the right, with the letters ‘OER’ positioned in the middle. The ‘O’ makes up the central hole of the wheel.

Figure 1 When looking for an image or other resource, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel – check what is available in open educational...

The internet contains an abundance of images, textbooks, videos and more, which could be used by educators and those who support or manage online learning. While this creates opportunities, there are also challenges because not all these resources can be readily reused for online or blended teaching due to restrictions of international copyright or intellectual property.

This week provides guidelines about the use, reuse and sharing of digital content with a particular focus on Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are online materials that have been shared with the intent that others can reuse them. They are underpinned by Creative Commons (CC) licences. These licences clearly outline what permissions and conditions apply to using the shared resources. This week also introduces and examines some online OER repositories and gives advice on finding OER to reuse and repurpose in your own context. OER offer an alternative to spending time trying to secure (usually at cost) permission to use copyrighted material.

Practitioner reflections

The week starts with a short video from Andy, who discusses his experiences with finding, using and sharing OER as part of his practice. As you watch the video or read the transcript, make a note of the main things you already know about OER, and any opportunities you can see at this stage for using them in your own practice.

Show transcript | Hide transcript

Transcript

ANDY:

Hello. Open Educational Resources is something I have thought about quite a lot over the last few years. But in the area that I work in, there really isn’t a lot out there. That’s in business education. I’ve been lucky enough to work in places that are quite open in sharing resources between other members of staff. But that is only within the institution itself, and that’s not really open at all.

Now, I have tried to be as open as I possibly can when I’ve created my own learning objects. For example, I created a set of lessons for my Year 10 business class fairly recently. I made sure I gave it a Creative Commons licence and non-commercial as well, so that they can be repurposed and sold on and they remain open, which I think is really important.

But before my study with the OU, licensing wasn’t really something I've thought about too much, especially when creating lessons and things like that, whereas now, through my studies, I very much focus on getting visuals from – if I get them from Flickr, for example, I’ll only search on Creative Commons, that type of thing. So, through my studies, it has helped me to think about licensing a bit more.

End transcript

 

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).