Open Education Handbook/Types of OER

Open Educational Resources (OERs) can divided up in many ways. For example open courseware, open textbooks and MOOCs can all be OER.

Here are some examples of OERs:

OER can also be divided up by their content format, though most OER will be comprised of a variety of media.
 * Complete courses
 * Individual course units or modules
 * Textbooks
 * Lesson plans
 * Syllabi
 * Lectures
 * Assignments
 * Games
 * Quizzes
 * Podcasts
 * Videos

One distinction which may be useful to think about is between 'Big' OER and 'Little' OER. Big OERs are institutionally generated ones that arise from projects such as OpenLearn. These are usually of high quality, contain explicit teaching aims, presented in a uniform style and form part of a time-limited, focused project with portal and associated research and data. Little OERs are the individually produced, low cost resources. They are produced by anyone, not just educators, may not have explicit educational aims, have low production quality and are shared through a range of third party sites and services.
 * Text led
 * Video led
 * Animation led
 * Multiple media

Further resources

 * Martin Weller on 'Big and little OER'.