According to UNESCO, "Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution."
For SUNY's purposes any course that uses 50% or more of open instructional material - material that can be copied, shared, remixed or adapted and accessed at no- or low-cost to the student - counts as an OER course. Increasing OER offerings will mean additional funding from SUNY for Jefferson.
OER can include:
| curriculum maps | quizzes |
| course materials | lab activities |
| full courses | simulations |
| textbooks | streaming videos |
| syllabi | multimedia applications |
| lectures | podcasts |
| homework assignments | other materials for teaching and learning |
Creative Commons licenses provide a standardized way for authors and creators to grant the public permission to share and use their creative works. Creative Commons licenses mix and match the following elements:
 |
Attribution (BY) Give credit to the original author |
 |
Share Alike (SA) Distribute derivative works under the same license |
 |
Non-Commercial (NC) Only use the work for noncommercial purposes |
 |
No Derivatives (ND) Only use verbatim copies of the work |
Open content is licensed in a way that grants users the permission to:
 Retain |
Make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage) |
 Reuse |
Use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video) |
 Revise |
Adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content (e.g., translate the content into another language) |
|
|
Combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup) |
 Redistribute |
Share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., post a copy of the content online for others to download) |
This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at: Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources.
Remix