OER, particularly open textbooks, save students money while empowering faculty by giving them more control over their course content.
The power of open educational resources comes from a set of permissions known as the "5 R's of OER" coined by David Wiley, which allows you to:
- Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
- Reuse: the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
- Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)"
These permissions are usually granted by the copyright holder of a work by licensing it under a Creative Commons license.
