What Can I use?

Licensing and Finding Open-Use Materials

In general, open licenses value open practices in that they seek to allow for works to be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon Links to an external site., all within the boundaries of copyright law. Licenses vary in what they require of users when utilizing open materials under a specific license. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution license (or CC-BY) requires the user of the work to give appropriate credit, to provide links to the license, and to not suggest that the original author endorses any new use of the resource.

Including attribution is easy and reinforces the importance of "citing your sources" for students. For how to do this, see How to License OER using Creative Commons (located in the next module).

Ready to Take the OER Plunge?

Remember that you do not have to replace all of your course materials in one semester. You can start slowly, replacing a few resources each semester.

When many people think of "OER" they are thinking about traditional textbooks. While there are plenty of high-quality OER textbooks out there (on the next page you will find a list of textbook repositories), OER can also include other content. For example, images and videos can make a class (online and on ground) more engaging for students. There are OER sources for these items as well (see the next page for resources).

Don't forget about the College of the Canyon's library! It is a great way to include articles that supplement your course content. Using library resources also has the added benefit of increasing student engagement with library resources (and increases their skills and confidence in using the library resources).

Start at Home! Use the College of the Canyons Library

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