Open Education
Image Credit: Jenni Marshall, Office of Surgical Education - Department of Surgery, University of Alberta, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Open Education encompasses resources, tools, and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted. At the core of Open Education is open educational resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and carry legal permission for open use.
The University of Alberta supports the exploration and use of open educational resources and practices to benefit teaching and learning, through increasing access and discoverability of learning resources, and contributing to student cost savings.
Quality of Teaching and Learning
Faculty are supported to explore new and collaborative teaching opportunities through the use of open educational resources
Access and Discoverability of Learning Resources
Educational resources are more accessible to students, faculty, and the institution through open licensing
Cost Savings to Students
Textbooks and learning material costs are reduced through open educational resources.
At the University of Alberta we anchor our definition of open to David Wiley's 5 Rs: Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute. To achieve this criteria, learning materials must be openly licensed.
Open licensing material through Creative Commons allows faculty and students to freely adapt learning materials to suit their teaching and learning needs. Open educational resources may include textbooks, video, audio, images, websites, journal articles, and more.
OER Support:
There are many advocates for open educational resources and practices on campus from CTL, Libraries, Bookstore, Copyright, and more. These passionate individuals collaborate to support various initiatives and events on campus to encourage the use of open educational resources and practices. These efforts range from raising awareness to hands-on development with faculty members to move their individual course work to "open".
"when we share, everyone wins" - Creative Commons
|
This online toolkit dives into customizing, teaching, and collaborating with open educational resources. |
University of Alberta's Open Education Interest Group Join the campus interest group to learn what others are up to across campus. |
||||
|
This printable guide step-by-step starter for locating, creating, adapting, and adopting OER. 10 minute walk through view is available, here. |
This is a go-to spot to stay up to date on University of Alberta OER activity including OERs created by UofA faculty, campus events, local, and global information about the movement. |
||||
Finding OER |
Adapting, Adopting, and Teaching with OER |
||||
| contact your subject matter librarian for help locating OER specific to your course |
connect with the OER team at |
||||