Digital teaching

Open Educational Resources (OER) are open educational materials published under an open license. Free access and free redistribution, editing and reuse of the materials is enabled by a specific OER license. In this context, the Creative Commons licenses have become established, which allow completely free use or use with minor restrictions.

OER are not only PDF documents, but can also be entire learning units, in addition to videos, images or music. Published under a free license, they are considered OER. (Source: UNESCO definition
)Teaching and learning materials are thus made usable for many
teaching staff and learning worldwide [Centre for teaching and learning].

The state portal ORCA.nrw was published in summer 2021 in NRW as a platform for the exchange of such materials.

Advantages of OER

• The use of OER enables you to plan your teaching efficiently. Many teaching materials already exist as OER. You can use them completely or in parts in your courses.
• By definition and license text, you can use OER in a legally secure way and usually do not have to observe any specific copyright regulations.
• OER offer a broad visibility of their own created materials through the worldwide networking of users.
• OER enable an open learning culture and new forms of collaboration.
• Repositories such as ORCA.nrw allow you to find a broad mass of quality-checked materials at a glance.

When dealing with Open Educational Resources (OER), not only didactic but also legal aspects have to be considered. The unique selling point of OER is the open licensing of educational materials. This enables the authors to use the materials more openly. Normally, copyright law protects authors by granting them exclusive rights of use from the moment the materials are created. Regulations through the pre-formulated Creative Commons (CC) licenses have greatly simplified the handling of granting usage rights to material that is usually protected by copyright. Nevertheless, legal questions regarding the individual scope of licensing arise again and again, in the context of which an individual consideration of the facts/individual case is often required in order to be able to make adequate legal recommendations for action. For these questions David Barber (legal counsel) is the right contact.