Open Education Resources
Additional Resources
- Iowa OER
Iowa OER is a statewide group supporting affordable higher education in Iowa. Its website provides information about state-specific OER topics and initiatives. Here you can find OER training modules, print resources, archived webinars, and more.
-------------------- - OpenHawks OER Grant ProgramOpenHawks is a UI-based OER grant program with awards issued each spring semester to instructors who want to replace their current textbooks with open alternatives.
-------------------- - Open Education Network
The Open Education Network (OEN) provides support, education, and community for those working in the areas of OER and Open Education Practices (OEP).
-------------------- - SPARCThe Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) supports the creation and sharing of open materials used in teaching. It also supports new approaches to learning where people create and shape knowledge openly together, and promotes practices and policies that advance this vision.
-------------------- - University of Iowa Pressbooks
Pressbooks is an open-source tool for authoring OER textbooks, and is supported at UI by ITS. Sign up for an account at this link.
-------------------- - Getting Started with OER: A Guide for UI OpenHawks recipientsThis guide provides UI-specific information about using and creating OER.
Copyright & Licensing for OER
Most OER are licensed using a Creative Commons license, which allows creators to choose exactly how their work can be used and reused. Since OER are not just free from cost but also have free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5 Rs (retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute), it's important to tell others exactly how they can and cannot use the OER you've created. Similarly, if you're adopting existing OER or revising existing OER, you must understand how the licenses work so you know what you can and cannot do.
Using Creative Commons Licenses
Creative Commons offers six main licenses that you can use to publish your work, four of which are appropriate for publishing OER. (Note: No Derivative Works licenses do not allow users to revise or remix and are therefore not appropriate for OER). The various licenses are listed below, starting with the most accommodating license type you can choose and ending with the most restrictive license type.
"CC License Freedom Scale Chart" by Foter, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported
Creative Commons Resources
To learn more about Creative Commons licenses, consult the following:
- Licenses and Examples from Creative CommonsThis page from the CC site explains what each type of license entails.
- OER Faculty WorkshopThis faculty course from the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction walks you through the basics of licensing for OER.
- Choose a LicenseCC's license chooser tool uses a wizard to generate the right license for you, as well as code to embed it into your OER.
- Wiki/CC License CompatibilityWhen combining works bearing different kinds of CC licenses, you must make sure that they are compatible with one another. This chart can help.
- Licensing of OERThis page from the Colorado School of Mines includes some additional graphic and video explanations of the CC licensing structure.
- Iowa State University Creative Commons GuideThis guide from Iowa State provides a comprehensive overview of Creative Commons licensing.
- University of Iowa Copyright GuideThis UI guide provides a more general overview of copyright for academics.