• Courses/syllabi
• Course materials
• Lesson plans
• Open textbooks
• Learning objects
• Videos
• Games
• Tests
• Software
• Any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge

OER allow users to:

• Retain: users have the right to make, archive, and “own” copies of the content;
• Reuse: content can be reused in its unaltered form;
• Revise:  content can be adapted, adjusted, modified, or altered;
• Remix: the original or revised content can be combined with other content to create something new;
• Redistribute: copies of the content can be shared with others in its original, revise,d or remixed form

“Open Education” by SPARC is licensed under CC BY 3.0  / excerpted from original
​

For more information on OER, checkout the OER Toolkit from College Libraries Ontario.

• 65% of students report not purchasing a textbook because of its high price [1].
• College textbook prices rose 82% between 2003 and 2013, approximately triple the rate of inflation in overall consumer prices (CPI) during the same period of time (27%) [2].
• Textbooks cost A LOT.
  • 
     
• Open resources make learning more accessible to lower income populations.
• Open resources allow faculty to adapt materials to the specific needs of each course.
• Open resources allow scholars to immediately share information globally.

[1]U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Student PIRGs. 2014. Fixing the Broken Textbook Market.
[2] Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2014. Consumer Price Index Databases.