European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning
According to the definition provided by Hewlett (n.d.), open educational resources are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others”. These can include whole courses of open content, textbooks, multimedia, software and any other materials which may be used to teach or support learning such as lesson plans and curricula. There remains some debate about what should qualify as an ‘open’ resource, with some definitions emphasizing open access to resources and others focusing on the affordances for revising and repurposing afforded by open licenses (see Creative Commons, 2013). However, any disagreements tend to be limited to the specific kinds of licenses for educational that are termed ‘open’ and whether they should permit specific forms of re-use (such as only allowing non-commercial re-use).
According to the definition provided by Hewlett (n.d.), open educational resources are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others”. These can include whole courses of open content, textbooks, multimedia, software and any other materials which may be used to teach or support learning such as lesson plans and curricula. There remains some debate about what should qualify as an ‘open’ resource, with some definitions emphasizing open access to resources and others focusing on the affordances for revising and repurposing afforded by open licenses (see Creative Commons, 2013). However, any disagreements tend to be limited to the specific kinds of licenses for educational that are termed ‘open’ and whether they should permit specific forms of re-use (such as only allowing non-commercial re-use).
