OER are freely and publicly available 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. For example, instructors may download the material, tailor it to one’s course, save a copy locally to share with one’s students and share it back out with attribution. OER can include textbooks, course materials and full courses, modules, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. An open source (or open) textbook is a textbook which is OER. Open access refers to teaching, learning and research materials that are available free online for anyone to use as is, but they may not be revised, remixed, or redistributed. This terminology is typically used for scholarly works (journals, books, etc.), but can also refer to other class materials. Examples of OA materials include government documents, articles from open access journals, reports from think tanks.
