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Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Providing open license and useful materials in learning & teaching activities from prestigious universities around the world to support students and academics at RMIT University and other universities in Vietnam.

Why use OERs?

There are many reasons for using OERs in learning and teaching.

For teaching staff, OERs can supplement and add value to existing curriculum resources.

At the same time, it can reduce the cost of education for your students (moving away from the use of expensive textbooks).

For students, using OERs can expose  students to a wider range of digital learning opportunities in the form of open texts, open images, open courseware, and self-assessment tools. According to JISC, learners can benefit from:

  • enhanced quality and flexibility of resources
  • seeing/applying knowledge in a wider context than their course may otherwise allow (international dimension)
  • support for learner-centered, self-directed, peer-to-peer and social/informal learning approaches.

OERs provide:

  • Learning resources with cost-saving, quality and flexibility of access
  • Enhanced opportunities for self-learning at home
  • Skills development: digital literacy skills for searching, reusing, recreating, disseminating, branding, networking,...OERs to learning community.

See more at Stakeholders and benefits page from Jisc.

The 5 Rs of Using OERs

Within the bounds of Creative Commons licensing there are 5 key points to consider when using OERs:

1. Reuse - Content can be reused in its unaltered original format

2. Retain - Copies of content can be retained for personal archives or reference

3. Revise - Content can be modified or altered to suit specific needs

4. Remix - Content can be adapted with other similar content to create something new

5. Redistribute - Content can be shared with anyone else in its original or altered format

Image by BCOER Librarians CC 4.0  Taken From BCcampus