OER: Open Educational Resources

Section 67423 of California Education Code defines Open Educational Resources (OER) as: 

"high-quality teaching, learning, and research resources that:

• Reside in the public domain or
• Have been released under an intellectual property license, such as a Creative Commons license, that permits their free use and repurposing by others, and
• May include other resources that are legally available and free of cost to students. 

Open educational resources include, but are not limited to, full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, faculty-created content, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."

According to the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, an open textbook:

• "is a body of educational content that is openly available over the web, by mail, or in a bookstore...",
• is "freely available under an unrestricted license to download and print...from several websites and OER (open educational resources) repositories", and
• has "a copyright that allows copying and distribution, or, with the most open copyrights, allows modifications of the content and even sale".