OER and Open Pedagogy

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium

OER

What are OER? Can my students keep using OERs after they are done with the course?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are 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. OERs can be textbooks, full courses, lesson plans, videos, tests, software, or any other learning object. The "open" in open educational resources indicates that these materials are licensed with copyright licenses that provide permission for everyone to participate in the 5R activities - retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute (definition by the Hewlett Foundation).”

OERs can be created, adopted, or adapted from previously existing ones.

The OER movement now dates almost twenty years old. Its origins lie in the pioneering work of computer programmers on creating open-source software as well as the growing awareness in the educational community of the need for equity and social justice when it comes to the exponentially growing cost of textbooks.

What does a zero cost/ZTC (zero textbook cost) designation mean?

The definition of a zero-cost resource is that students do not incur any cost for purchasing it—rather than zero-cost to its creators or the libraries that obtain and maintain it. While the College Now students are enrolled in their courses, they can use any resource provided by the York College Library, including a large number of databases that cover academic and general-interest articles, as well as resources such as LinkedIn Learning.

License Terms from the Creative Commons

Attribution (CC BY)
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as 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, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.

Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND)
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as 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, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Creative Commons Licensing Elements:

• BY – Credit must be given to the creator
• SA – Adaptations must be shared under the same terms
• NC – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
• ND – No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

To see more, please go to the Creative Commons website.

Open Pedagogy

While open educational resources as a field have only emerged in the late 1990s, open pedagogy is an older phenomenon, dating back to the 1970s and entailing such goals as participation, democracy, and interdisciplinary. David Wiley has revived the concept which in its current iteration--taking into account the affordances of the 5Rs--stands for the creation, re-use, and free publication of open educational resources--is a phenomenon that has re-channeled and reinvigorated the conversation around open content in the last few years. While OER creation has been a goal of educational institutions concerned with equity and social justice, open pedagogy, sometimes termed Open Educational Practices (OEPs), has received much attention for taking those goals to a new dimension and having students be not only consumers but also co-creators and co-producers of knowledge.

What is Open Pedagogy?

While open educational resources as a field have only emerged in the late 1990s, open pedagogy is an older phenomenon, dating back to the 1970s and entailing such goals as participation, democracy, and interdisciplinary. David Wiley has revived the concept which in its current iteration--taking into account the affordances of the 5Rs--stands for the creation, re-use, and free publication of open educational resources--is a phenomenon that has re-channeled and reinvigorated the conversation around open content in the last few years. While OER creation has been a goal of educational institutions concerned with equity and social justice, open pedagogy, sometimes termed Open Educational Practices (OEPs), has received much attention for taking those goals to a new dimension and having students be not only consumers but also co-creators and co-producers of knowledge.

Where can I publish my open pedagogy?

Follow this link for resources about teaching with CUNY Academic Commons and also consider publishing with CUNY's instance of the Manifold platform.

You can also create open pedagogy by authoring or editing Wikipedia articles.

Open Pedagogy Virtual Showcase

This is a one-hour annotated showcase of work by participants in the 2019-2020 OER and Open Pedagogy initiative at York College.

Where can I find out more about Open Educational Resources (OER), Creative Commons licenses, and Open Pedagogy?

See York College's libguide on OER created by Science Librarian Stefka Tzanova.

OER Libguide

A New York State grant, designed to lower textbook costs for students, has made it possible to grant CUNY faculty stipends to convert their classes to openly licensed or zero-cost since 2017. The grant is currently in its fifth year. Read the following official statement from the university about the CUNY OER Grant.

For definitions, examples and debates about Open Pedagogy, view the Open Pedagogy Notebook.

Open Pedagogy Notebook

Please contact York College CTLET for further information and resources—including how to create your own OERs!

Where can I find OERs? And are there OERs specifically created for high school-level students?

Search Khan Academy for K-12 materials. For other types of materials, consider starting with OER Commons (the latter has over 70,000 items in the K-16 range). Baruch College's TeachOER is an open pedagogy website that aggregates open educational content and also contains assignments that demonstrate OER usage in teaching.

Many open materials were made with the broad educational community in mind and can be used successfully in both college and high school settings. And keep in mind that such websites as the Digital Public Library of America, Getty Images, the Met Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, and the New York Public Library Photo Collection are also open educational resources, which assume no age limits.

Additional Resources

Reading materials about Open Pedagogy

Open Platforms at CUNY (Google Slides)

Open Platforms to create, edit, reuse and share OERs

Please contact York College CTLET with any questions about OER and open pedagogy--and if you are interested in creating your own resource alongside your students!

This work is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons license.