General questions about OER

OER are any type of teaching and learning materials that are provided in the public domain or under an open license. Such an open license allows free access as well as free use, modification, and redistribution by others with no or minor restrictions. In this context, the authors themselves determine which rights of use they grant and which rights they reserve. OER include textbooks, curricula, course concepts, scripts, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation formats, among others..

• OER offer the opportunity to optimize teaching materials and thereby relieve the teachers.
• OER support open forms of teaching and learning that actively involve students and thus impart important skills.
• OER facilitate the adaptation of teaching to the challenges of diversity.
• OER visualise best practice examples in teaching and encourage imitation. In this way, OER can improve the quality of teaching.
• OER enable synergies and cooperation across university boundaries.
• OER can increase the reputation of university teachers.
• Excellent teaching achievements at universities and colleges are worldwide visible through this statewide OER platform.

In their own interest alone, author would not publish questionable material out of fear of accusation or embarrassment. Published teaching materials are just as much academic figureheads as other scientific publications. Moreover, errors or outdated information can be easily improved at any time. Of course even from you.

Of course, many people initially only want to reuse material, but even a few shares can inspire a whole culture of sharing. Wikipedia also started out small. Be an inspiration and role model for others.

In addition of feeling good for improving education for everyone, publishing of teaching material as an OER opens a wide range of opportunities for you to receive feedback and recognition. If you became a university teacher to inspire others and pass on your knowledge, with OER you have the chance to reach many more people than just those sitting in your lecture hall.

Check if a free license is right for your work.
The two test questions are: Do you want this content to be distributed as widely as possible? Are you willing to give up some control over what happens to the material?

Check wether you alone are authorized to grant the license.
In order to license a work, the rights of third parties must not be violated (e.g. personal rights, trademark rights, etc.). This also means that you must be the sole author. In addition, it must be checked whether, for example in the case of a work that was created professionally, the rights of the employer are also affected.

Choose the license that best suits your needs.
There are different licenses to choose from (see licensing questions in the FAQ License).

Indicate how the attribution should be made.
As the licensor, you can determine how the attribution should be done. This can be your name and/or a pseudonym and/or an institution. In the "Edit information" dialog, you have the option to specify the authors in the desired order for each of your objects in the repository or to provide a free indication of the authorship.

Provide accompanying meta information.
Materials are often not 100% self-explanatory. In this case, it is helpful to provide accompanying information for classification, such as keywords, to explain possible contexts for using the materials.

Provide files in editable formats.
OER allows the further processing of materials. However, permission is of little use if, for example, only pdf-files are provided or the file formats can only be processed with specific, commercial software.

Specify the licensing notice correctly.
You can declare this easily and conveniently for your materials in the repository, see this question about the correct license information.

As a student, you are welcome to publish OER in ZOERR. For quality assurance purposes, we ask for a recommendation from the lecturer regarding the OER, which you simply send to us by e-mail.