1 Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials that are freely available in the public domain and are specifically licensed for reuse without cost. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has supported many OER initiatives. It defines open education and OER in the following way:
‘At Hewlett, we use the term “open education” to encompass the myriad of learning resources, teaching practices and education policies that use the flexibility of OER to provide learners with high quality educational experiences. Creative Commons defines OER as teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities – retaining, remixing, revising, reusing and redistributing the resources.’