Differences between OER and other digital resources – online courses, MOOC courses and others

General rights for copying and repurposing are what make OER different from any other educational resources available online free of charge. Free materials and courses such as most MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) allow users only fair use rights, or rights stated in specific licenses issued by the publisher. Most of them cannot be legally copied, and users cannot create their own courses based on them or update them if a mistake has been found – not, that is, without explicit agreement from copyright owners. In the case of Open Educational Resources, all users are given the above rights without needing to request permission from copyright holders (as long as they adhere to license conditions, such as attribution); the users’ rights are clearly specified and easily understandable (thanks to Creative Commons licenses and their clear system). Most OER materials are published under free Creative Commons licenseshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/ or as Public Domain.

Want to know more?

The Role of OER in a New World of MOOC, OER Research Hub,

Opinion: Thoughts from Udacity’s Open Education Alliance and edX’s mooc.org announcements, Saylor.org