Open Touro OER Project

According to OER Commons, "Open educational resources (OER) 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 re-purposing by others." 

Kirk Snyder CC BY 4.0

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

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.