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Open Educational Resources

An open educational resource (OER) is peer reviewed researched academic content that has been made available via an open license such as a Creative Commons License.

How do OERs benefit learning and teaching?

For learners

  • The opportunity to test out course materials before enrolling, and compare with other similar courses
  • Opportunities to be involved in OER initiatives either through contributing towards OER development – learning valuable skills of information appraisal and peer review
  • Reduced cost of education by replacing textbooks with peer reviewed open educational resources

For faculty

  • Benefits (efficiency and cultural) of collaborative approaches to teaching/learning
  • Reaching a wider range of learners
  • Professional/peer-to-peer learning about the processes of OER release

Reference: What are the benefits of releasing OER?

Sample OER Declaration

"One of the most often cited definitions of OER comes from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation: “Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use...” (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation website). In keeping with the intention and spirit of OER, we offer this report free of charge to educators, learners and researchers everywhere under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. We invite you to use it, cite it, share it with others and share your feedback about the report with us. The authors’ website profiles are included at the end of this report. We welcome your feedback."  

From Signature pedagogies for e-learning in higher education and beyond by Sarah Eaton et al., available under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

University of Calgary OER Pilot Project

The development, adoption and adaptation of Open Educational Resources is emerging in Alberta largely because of the contributions of motivated individuals and groups who are supported by government funding. At the University of Calgary, a cross-functional group including academic staff members active in OER development, students, educational developers, librarians and the UCalgary bookstore have identified a need to develop an integrated network for communicating about, resourcing, and advocating for, OERs.

The University of Calgary marked the March 2017 Open Education Week by announcing the launch of a new initiative designed to provide institutional support for adopting and adapting OERs.

OER Events and Workshops

All OER events and workshops are open to the university community.  Students, researchers, post-doctoral scholars, faculty, librarians, and bookstore staff are welcome.

Upcoming Events

Please check back for information about future events.

Past Events

March 5 - 9, 2018: Open Education Week
January 4, 2018: Best Practices for Sharing your OER with the World
November 10 and 14, 2017: Introduction to OER at a Postsecondary Level and its Implications
October 18 and 24, 2017: OER Publishing with GitHUb and LaTeX (Presentation Notes)
September 20, 2017: Intangible OERs (Community of practice introductions, RA hiring process, monthly workshop plan) 
July 27 and August 3, 2017: Open Educational Resource Orientation Session (Communication and awareness)

For More Information

Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning Contact

Ykje Piera
Taylor Institute OER Lead
tioer@ucalgary.ca