Open Educational Resources (OER)

Creative Commons (CC) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to helping build and sustain a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. The main goal is to make sharing more easy and accessible. Due to open educational resources (OER) having an open license, creative commons provides a set of six licenses. These licenses can be attached to your work and tell the user how this resource can be used or not used. 

Creative Commons Licenses give everyone a standardized way to grant you–the public–permission to their work under copyright law. When you look at a work by an individual creator or large institution, you want to ask yourself, What can I do with this work? A creative commons license will give you the answer.

The presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work? There are six licenses and they each provide different permissions, depending on what you want others to do with your work. These licenses work with copyright. Each of these licenses have their own permissions. They are the following: 

For example, “CC BY” is the most permissive of these licenses. This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. Attribution means giving credit where credit is due. Whereas CC BY-NC-ND is the least permissive. This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

If you decided to build a learning/teaching material for your class, then you can attach a creative commons licenses to that item. This will let users know how this work can be used–or not used. I want to emphasize that you have a choice. Always remember that you have autonomy in how you want to share your work–or not. 

Creative Commons: https://creativecommons.org/mission/

Creative Commons Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

Creative Commons: CC License Chooser https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/

Creative Commons and OERs: https://creativecommons.org/about/education-oer/

Attribution: 

Design: Markus Büsges, leomaria designbüro, Germany, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons