Literacy Council of Tyler OER Fact Sheet

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by ashly winkle

Literacy Council of Tyler OER Fact Sheet

Definition of OER:
  • Teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits sharing, accessing, repurposing—including for commercial purposes—and collaborating with others.
  • Five foundational principles (the 5Rs) are part of all OER.
The Five R’s:
  • 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
Difference between free and open resources:
  • Free resources serve a meaningful purpose in AE by providing teachers with tools to support teaching and learning.
  • "Free" means that materials are free to access, but not remix or revise.
  • When a resource is open, a user can remix or revise with other open resources or self-generated content to produce new material that directly targets the adult learner’s needs.
Where to create and remix OER:
Relevance of OER to Adult Education:
  • OER offer open access to educational resources to anyone, anywhere, any time.
  • This is the future of adult education - a system that allows students to study when, where and how ever they can.
  • With the dramatic change in high school equivalency exams starting in 2014, and the focus now on career pathways as well as English proficiency expectation equal to native speakers, something had to change to make it all work.  
  • Because there is a need for individualized instruction with an individual learning plan for each student, OER allows educators to buy, store, and supply the materials necessary to teach a variety of topics at the same time.
  • Quality OER can be powerful in enhancing learning and instruction in adult education.
  • OER help students achieve their learning goals by providing flexible and accessible supplements to instruction.
  • OER encourage lifelong learning habits in students by providing them with personalized and readily available learning materials.
  • OER helps educators by augmenting instruction, strengthening their content knowledge, and providing access to free online professional development.

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Dutton, Don. "NMDELT OER Fact Sheet". OER Commons. Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, 01 Aug. 2018. Web. 26 Apr. 2019. <https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/47130-nmdelt-oer-fact-sheet>.  

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