Skip to Main Content

Libraries & Cultural Resources

Research Guides

Open Educational Resources (OER)

This guide provides information and resources to help support you learn about OER, find and evaluate existing OER, adopt OER, and create OER projects.

OER Glossary

Ancillary materials are resources that can be used to support additional teaching and learning needs within a course. They are also known as supplemental or supplementary content. They can be used in conjunction with an open textbook, but also as separate components of a course. These resources may include question banks, videos, images, simulations, lesson plans, lecture notes and slides, open homework platforms, assessments, workbooks and lab manuals, or interactive content.

Open Educational Resources (OER): Learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others (UNESCO, 2021). OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge (Hewlett Foundation, 2017).

Open textbooks are a source of information which includes learning, teaching, and research materials in a variety of formats and mediums, designed specifically for the use of students, in a particular subject or field of study which is developed based on an instructional sequence or syllabus and geared towards meeting specific quality and learning requirements within an organized curriculum. This source of information is published by the copyright holder either under an open licence or into the public domain – whereby rights have been waived or expired - allowing for no-cost access, reuse, repurposing, adaptation, and redistribution by others (Adapted from: UNESCO 2003a and UNESCO IBE 2006, UNESCO 2021, and BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide)

OER-enabled pedagogy is "the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions that are characteristic of OER" (Wiley & Hilton, 2018, p. 135). Students engage as creators or co-creators of Open Educational Resources with a focus on "renewable assignments."

Supplementary materials are resources that can be used to support additional teaching and learning needs within a course. They are also known as supplemental or ancillary content. They can be used in conjunction with an open textbook, but also as separate components of a course. These resources may include question banks, videos, images, simulations, lesson plans, lecture notes and slides, open homework platforms, assessments, workbooks and lab manuals, or interactive content.

Libraries & Cultural Resources