Getting to Know Open Education Resources (OERs)
Quick Start: Know the Jargon (Terms & Definitions)
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Course Delivery Terminology | |
| Blended learning (“Flipped classroom”) |
Blended learning is a combination of both face-to-face and online instruction. For example, a student alternates studying in class, with studying independently using Internet-based resources and spaces. |
| Face-to-face | Face-to-face instructional typically occurs in a classroom and that is bound by time, space, and place. |
| LMS (Learning Management System) |
An LMS is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of educational courses or training programs. |
| Licensing & Permissions Terminology | |
| Copyright | Copyright means the sole right to produce or reproduce a work or a substantial part of it in any form. |
| Fair dealing / Fair use | Fair dealing is a user right contained in the Copyright Act (Canada). Fair dealing allows one to copy from a copyrighted work, without the copyright owner’s permission, if the copy is research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review or news reporting; and, the dealing (use) is fair. |
| OER (Open Educational Resource) |
Open Educational Resources are “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 repurposing by others.An OER gives instructors and students the legal permission to engage in the “5Rs”.[1]
An OER is:
OERs include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”[2] |
| Open license | This is the “intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others” that defines a resource as “open”.For example, all new open textbooks added to the BC Open Textbook collection are released under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 International license. With this open license, you are free to:
for any purpose, even commercial. |
| Public domain | The state of belonging or being available to the public as a whole, and therefore not subject to copyright. |