OER Fact Sheet for Mathematics Education

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Adrian DeWindt-King

Open Education Resources Fact Sheet for Mathematics Education

What is Open Education Resources?

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation define Open Educational Resources (OER) as teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.

This means that you can download and share resources and you can edit and remix resources before using or sharing the resource. To determine how the resource can be used, reused, remixed, and shared you can view the permissions granted through the Commons license. Examples of some licenses are as follows[1]:

Attribution   CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, if they credit you for the original creation.

Attribution-ShareAlike   CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes if they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NoDerivs   CC BY-ND

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial if it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

 Attribution-NonCommercial   CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike   CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially if they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs   CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others if they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Public Domain Mark - "No Known Copyright"

Our Public Domain Mark enables works that are no longer restricted by copyright to be marked as such in a standard and simple way, making them easily discoverable and available to others.

What are the Five Rs of OER?

Another way to think about OER is through the Five R Framework, developed by David Wiley.[2] It supports a deeper understanding of what it means to consider an object (i.e., resource) an OER.  

  • Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
  • Reuse – the right to reuse the content as verbatim or in its unaltered form
  • Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
  • Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other content to create something new
  • Redistribute – the right to make and share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others


What is the relevance of OER to mathematics instruction?

OER can be located that assist mathematics teachers and learners in many ways, including the following:

  • Finding and refining classroom activities focused on learning objectives
  • Replacing “hard copy” and expensive textbooks
  • Simulation games
  • Equation solvers and other useful applications
  • Photographs and images
  • Professional development
  • Instructional videos

Fact Sheet as a Word document.

Download: M1-OER_Fact_Sheet_rev_SYqmVUf.docx

[1] Adapted from http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses

[2] Adapted from the fact sheet made possible through the Open Educational Resources to Support Adult STEM Teaching and Learning project, funded by the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), contract # ED-VAE-12-R-0044.

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