What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials available for free on the web. OER can take many forms, including textbooks, websites, videos, lesson plans, slides, and other ancillary materials. They can be read digitally, downloaded, and printed for use. OERs often provide explicit legal permission to adapt, adopt, and redistribute other people’s work, typically by licensing the work with a Creative Commons license or other open-source license.
Creative Commons is a free licensing system that allows the author of a work to specify how it can be used by others. Creative Commons allows for creative reuse, supporting a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture.
Creative Commons Licenses are not an alternative to copyright. Rather, the licenses are a legal layer on top of copyright giving others the legal permission to copy and use the work, and allow you to modify the copyright terms to best suit your needs.
OER License types
You’ll find the following CC license types listed for individual resources on this site.
| License | Permissions |
| CC0 | This is in the public domain. You can adapt it any way you wish and even use it commercially without giving credit to the original author. |
| CC BY | You must give credit (attribution) to the original author. You can adapt and use commercially. |
| CC BY-SA | CC BY license + “Share Alike.” means that you must attribute it and share any adaptations you make with the same CC BY-SA license. |
| CC BY-NC | CC BY + “Non-Commercial.” means that you must attribute it and you can adapt it as you’d like, but you cannot sell it or profit from it. |
| CC BY-NC-SA | CC BY + “Non-Commercial” + “Share Alike” means that you can use it with attribution and adapt it, but you cannot sell it or profit from it. You must share your content using CC BY-NC-SA license. |
| CC BY-ND | CC BY + “No Derivatives” means that you can use it with attribution, can profit from it, but cannot adapt it. |
| CC BY-NC-ND | CC BY + “Non-Commercial” plus “No Derivatives” means that you can use it with attribution, you cannot adapt it, and you cannot sell it or profit from it. |
Test your knowledge of Creative Commons licenses with an online quiz.
About this project
This project was created by faculty and staff at The English Language Center at LaGuardia Community College in collaboration with LaGuardia’s Library using funds from The New York State OER grant.
The resources are organized by language skills and are mapped to TELC levels.
This site includes ESOL material with Creative Commons licenses and content that is All Rights Reserved but freely available for instructional purposes. Note that All Rights Reserved material cannot be altered.
The list below outlines the OER repositories and open textbook resources reviewed during the course of this project.
