Everyday we encounter online resources that are free to read, watch, or listen to. However, there’s a lot more to open than just being able to view something for free. Open means that users have the permission to freely download, edit, and share educational resources to better serve all students. Students can save copies of their assigned resources forever, and educators can tailor and update the content to meet course needs. While making resources free is a good first step, making them open taps into a world of possibility.

Here are some examples of how students and educators have benefitted from the permissions that come with open educational resources:

• A collaborative effort of Australian librarians, including JCU Library staff, resulted in Legal Research Skills: An Australian Law Guide: 2024 JCU edition. This guide assists students across the JCU Law course and is an adaptation of the University of Queensland Library’s Legal Research Essentials.

• Academics from the University of Southern Queensland adapted Anatomy and Physiology, authored by a consortium of academics from the United States, into a new volume called Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology to suit an Australian context. At JCU, this new text replaces a student paid textbook for BM1032, BM1042, BM1052 and BM1062.

• JCU Open eBook Documentation in Nursing and Midwifery: Australian edition offers multi-format downloads for offline access for JCU Nursing and Midwifery course students. Free access continues beyond graduation, and elements of it form part of Communication for Health Professionals for JCU subject RH1002 - broadening its impact to even more students.

Most modern educational resources - from textbooks to lectures - start out as digital files before being converted into other formats including (but not limited to) print and audio. The same goes for OERs. Most OERs start as digital but can be used in a wide variety of formats on many different devices. For example, many open textbooks can be printed, read on a screen, or heard through text-to-speech technology. The difference between OERs and traditional resources is that students and educators do not have to choose between formats. With traditional materials, students often need to purchase print books and eBooks separately, and digital materials often carry an expiration date.

Here are some examples of how OERs come in a variety of formats:

• OERs can be viewed on a variety of devices, allowing students to simultaneously keep a printed copy at home, a mobile version to read on the go, and a browser-based version to read during class. Neuroscience, psychology and conflict management is a JCU authored eBook that can be downloaded in .PDF and .ePub formats, making its use less dependent on internet access.

• OERs can be legally converted from one format to another. This is especially helpful for campus Accessibility Services, who can create - and share (large print, braille, or audio) versions of OER texts without seeking any additional permissions.

In this increasingly digital and internet connected world, the old adage of “you get what you pay for” is growing outdated. New models are developing across all aspects of society that dramatically reduce or eliminate costs to users, and this kind of innovation has spread to educational resources.

OER publishers have worked to ensure the quality of their resources. Many open textbooks are created within rigorous editorial and peer-review guidelines, and many OER repositories allow academics to review the material. There is also a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that OERs can be both free of cost and high quality - and more importantly, support positive student learning outcomes.

Here is some evidence supporting the quality of OER:

• Exploring sociology in the Antipodes: Introduction to sociology is JCU authored and written for SY1001 students. This text went through an external peer-review process prior to publication.

• OpenStax - one of the most recognised open textbook publishers - created a library of peer-reviewed, professional grade open textbooks for the highest enrollment college courses. These books are kept up to date through a centrally controlled errata process.

• The Open Textbook Library is a large and growing collection of open textbooks. Prospective users can read public reviews of the books written by academics, who assess a text through a star rating and a ten-point rubric.

• Many peer-reviewed academic research studies have found OERs support positive student outcomes. One study of ten institutions found that students who used OERs tended to perform the same or better than their peers in terms of grades, course completion, and other measures of academic success.

Whether resources are open or closed, academics are the best judges of quality because they know their students’ needs.

OERs carry permissions for users to freely download, edit and share the content to better serve all students. These permissions are granted by the creator of an OER through an open license - a legal document that informs users of their right to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the work. Open licensing is a simple, legal way for authors to keep their copyright and share their work with the public under the terms and conditions they choose.

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a set of standard open licenses that are used throughout the OERs community. Materials licensed under CC licenses are easy to identify, clearly explain the permissions and conditions of reuse, and don’t require any additional permission to use or adapt. To add an open license to a work, an author simply needs to include a copyright statement indicating that the resources carry a CC license and include a link to the specific license.

Here are some ways to get support using CC licenses:

• Check out JCU Library Creative Commons guidance

• JCU Open eBook Creative Commons for JCU staff

• To select which CC license to apply to your work, use this license selection tool

• When using Creative Commons licensed content, this attribution builder tool can help ensure you give proper attribution.

Everyone recognises that it takes time and effort to develop high quality educational resources, and that there should be incentives and support models in place for OERs to be sustainable in the long-term. Incentives take many forms, including preparing for a new teaching period or recognising OERs as a contribution toward promotion. Funded models may include JCU grants. JCU Open eBook Teaching with Technology was published in 2022 and is routinely updated by the authors as part of their normal preparation for a new teaching year.

Instructors increasingly expect publishers to provide ancillary materials with textbooks, including lecture slides, images, videos and homework platforms. This demand for ancillary materials is beginning to be met directly by OER publishers and commercial companies who offer complementary products to open textbooks. There are also many repositories that hold openly licensed materials that can serve as ancillaries, including PowerPoint slides, videos and simulations. Liaison Librarians can work with academics to help find these resources or share resources that others have already created.

Here are some examples of OER ancillary materials:

• JCU Open eBooks Pacific French intermediate workbook was designed to facilitate active learning by JCU French students, and Eddie Koiki Mabo: History in the making contains lesson plans for years 9 and 12 high school teachers.

• Check out OER Commons for free open textbook and ancillary resources, including videos, homework assignments, games, case studies, lesson plans and course syllabi.

• Traditional publishers have increasingly begun to offer software homework systems, particularly in STEM fields. MyOpenMath provides an open-source alternative used by hundreds of campuses.

• Institutions across the world have launched programs to encourage academic staff to make curricular resources openly available, including ancillaries such as lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, and assessments. MIT OpenCourseWare is a web-based publication of openly available MIT course content.

Changing institutional culture to support OERs can start small. A single academic can choose to replace traditional resources with OERs - whether it’s a set of supplementary simulations or an entire textbook. In some cases, academics may be using OERs without even knowing it. For example, many YouTube videos and Flickr images are openly licensed, and textbooks published by projects like OpenStax, Open Textbook Library and Pressbooks are used at literally thousands of institutions. Check out OER World Map which showcases the global OER ecosystem, and JCU Library’s growing Open Educational Resources Discovery Collection of OERs - curated by Library staff.