In this section we’ll explain exactly what we mean when we say open textbooks and open course packs. Even if you’re familiar with this concept, please keep reading to understand how we apply it in Year 2 of this project.

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that:

• have been released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others, or
• reside in the public domain.

Because the materials are openly licensed or in the public domain – in other words, they are not under all-rights-reserved copyright – you have permission to do what David Wiley (n.d.) calls the “5 R’s”:

1. Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage).
2. Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video).
3. Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language).
4. Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup).
5. Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend).

This means that if you find an open educational resource that’s perfect for your curriculum, you can use it; and if you find something that’s mostly great for your curriculum, you can adapt it. Under the terms of the license you’ll provide attribution to the source, which we show you how to do below.

Open licenses

An open license sits on top of the copyright for a document and specifies what can and cannot be done with a work. It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one that grants permission to do the “5 R’s” listed above (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute). Figure Y2 1.4 shows several differences between all-rights-reserved and openly licensed content.

When you find content online, assume that it’s under all-rights-reserved copyright unless you see an open license. There are many different open licenses, but the most common open licenses used for educational materials are Creative Commons licenses (if you want to learn more about Creative Commons, you can optionally explore Creative Commons [Website]). Sometimes you can also find a terms of use page that gives you the permissions you need to reuse the material in your openly licensed course. Please ask the Project Manager for help identifying permissions for reuse if you have any questions.

Public domain

A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright, which means it’s free for you to use without permission. There are also works that automatically enter the public domain – in particular, publications of the federal government.

The chart at Copyright Term and the Public Domain [Website] can help you determine whether a work is still under copyright. The answer can be difficult to determine, so ask a librarian if you need help.

Works that are in the public domain can be used without attribution, but we still ask you to create an attribution for public domain content that you use. It models appropriate use of others’ work for your students, and it helps you track down that source again if you need to.

Creating Open Educational Resources

Authors and Pilot Instructors in the Open Curriculum Development Project retain the copyright to their own work. But it will not be published under all-rights-reserved copyright. You’ll choose an open license that will sit on top of your copyright and let future users know what permissions they have to reuse, revise, and share your work with attribution. That’s what makes it an open educational resource.

However, we’re not ready to share with an open license yet, since it’s just the beginning of Year 2. What we have so far are manuscripts for our textbooks that are ready to be piloted with students and sent out for review by colleagues and our Workforce Advisory Board. This year we’re also going to pilot courses that align with the textbooks. All of this work will be under all-rights-reserved copyright for now.

The reason that we do not share prelaunch versions of our projects with open licenses is that the open license encourages users to revise, remix, etc. We want users to do those things with the launch version of the project, which will be revised from the current version based on the valuable feedback we gather in Year 2.

In the meantime, you are welcome to share in your professional network. Please let the leadership team know if someone else adopts one of the manuscripts created through this project. We want to track the impact of its use over time and notify everybody when the launch version is published.

Writing an Attribution and Using the Attribution Style Guide

Isn’t it plagiarism to reuse and reproduce someone else’s work? In general, yes. But when people publish their work with an open license, they give permission for others to reuse their work with attribution.

Attribution has a lot in common with the familiar concept of citation. Both citation and attribution give credit to others. However, citation and attribution have different purposes. Because they serve different purposes, you cannot replace one with the other, even though they have similar rules and parts.

• Citations have an academic purpose. They tell your reader where ideas that you quote, paraphrase, or summarize, came from. A citation says to the reader: “I base my thinking on this other person’s work, which you can find by following my citation.”
• Attributions have a legal purpose. Writing an attribution statement is a legal requirement of reusing openly licensed works. An attribution says to the reader: “I have permission to reuse this other person’s work, which you can find by following my attribution.”

All images, text, and other content that you did not create (unless it is a short quote in quotation marks, in which case you’ll write a reference list entry) should have a TASL, or an attribution that includes:

• Title (when available)
• Author or creator (when available)
• Source (link or URL), and
• Licensing or copyright information.

The Attribution Style Guide [Website] provides examples of how to attribute common types of content. The style used is based on the WA Open Attribution Builder [Website], which you can use to easily generate attributions for open content. For future users, it’s important to be clear what part of your work is built on an adapted work, so make sure to add this information to your attribution (usually a figure number or subsection title).

If you changed someone’s work (edited, shortened, expanded, etc.), it’s best practice to note these adaptations or modifications at the end of your attribution. You can find examples of attribution statements with modification notes in the Attribution Style Guide [Website].

Equity and Open Educational Resources

Open licenses are a huge innovation for course materials simply because affordable course materials make a real financial difference to students. But the transformative potential of open education must not stop there. If we focus only on open licenses, we risk reproducing the inequity and harm that already exist in our curricula.

An open license tells you about the permissions that you have to use or reuse content. It doesn’t tell you about the quality of the work, and it doesn’t mean that the work includes diverse voices or speaks to a diverse audience.

The open education movement itself is not beyond critique. For example, Marco Seiferle-Valencia, Open Education Librarian at the University of Idaho, has done important work demonstrating that the origin story of the open education movement tends to ignore aligned movements led by Black, Indigenous, and other activists of color. Building on the work of Seiferle-Valencia, Jasmine Roberts-Crews points out that Black feminism is essential to conversations about open values, practices, and pedagogy.

For more critical analysis of open education, optionally visit:

• Marco Seiferle-Valencia’s work: Looking Beyond Cost: OER as Intentionally Engaged Social Justice [Streaming Video]
• Jasmine Roberts-Crews’s 2023 paper: The Black Feminist Pedagogical Origins of Open Education [Website]
• The collection Open at the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Open Education [Website], edited by Maha Bali, Catherine Cronin, Laura Czerniewicz, Robin DeRosa, and Rajiv Jhangiani, for a wide variety of authors and views.

The Open Curriculum Development Project offers an opportunity to create a curriculum while considering equity at every step of the process. We are learning too! Please raise questions with your Project Manager, Instructional Designer, or the support team when you find places where we can center historically underrepresented voices better in this project.

Licenses and Attributions for Open Education Foundations

Open content, original

“Open Education Foundations” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open content, shared previously

“Open Education Foundations” is modified from “Understanding the basics of OER” by Amy Hofer for Open Oregon Educational Resources, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

References