Open Educational Resources (OER) are an important means through which governments and educators can promote, develop and share educational materials, resources and content beyond the traditional proprietary publishing model.

The sharing of content has a long history  and learning materials were being shared well before the term OER was coined in an online forum hosted by UNESCO on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries and Creative Commons released its open copyright licenses in 2002.  Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute).

OER are quality educational materials that are freely and openly licensed, and are available online to anyone, anytime. The creation of OER is usually funded by governments or donors and the resultant products are released under a Creative Commons open license or directly into the public domain.  OER may be developed by volunteers provided that all contributions are properly recognised.

OER are customisable or ‘re-mixable’ which requires that the editable, underlying digital assets are made available to enable others to adapt the works.