Open Touro OER Project

Open Educational Resources (OER) are guided by the idea that high-quality educational materials should be available to everyone.

OER are any teaching, learning, or research materials, in any medium, that are cost-free and openly licensed.

• Free: available to everyone, at all times, at no cost
• Open: released by the author or creator under a license (usually Creative Commons) that makes their work available for others to use, share, and even edit, remix, and adapt for their own purposes. 

Myth #1: Open simply means free. Fact: Open means the permission to freely download, edit, and share materials to better serve all students

Myth #2: All OER are digital. Fact: OER take many formats, including print, digital, audio, and more

Myth #3: “You get what you pay for.” Fact: OER can be produced to the same quality standards as traditional textbooks including peer review

Myth #4: Copyright for OER is complicated. Fact: Open licensing makes OER easy to freely and legally use

Myth #5: OER are not sustainable. Fact: Models are evolving to support the sustainability and continuous improvement of OER

Myth #6: Open textbooks lack ancillaries. Fact: Open textbooks often come with ancillaries, and when they do not, existing OER can provide additional support

Myth #7: My institution is not ready for OER. Fact: Any institution can start with small steps toward OER that make an impact for students

Source: OER Mythbusting from SPARC

This guide was created by librarians at Touro University and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If you re-use, remix or link to this guide, it would be appreciated if you could notify our staff.