 Open Educational Resources. In this video, we'll explore them together and see how you can use them in your courses. Let's go beyond the traditional textbook and just imagine. What if you could reuse teaching materials from your peers from other universities? What if you could customize this content and add your own reflection moments and updates? What if you could remix several sources and create course-tailored modules? What if you and your students could co-create reusable and non-disposable content? What if your students could collaborate to create their own content? And what if you could release these materials for open reuse, free of legal or financial restrictions? Now, how can we make all of this possible? The answer involves open educational resources and open licenses. Open Educational Resources, or OER, are teaching and learning materials that are free of cost and access barriers, which also carry legal permissions for open reuse, which allows anyone to freely use, adjust and share these resources. Let's take a look at a few examples of OERs. Think of an open textbook like this one, or collections of university-level syllabi, like these ones. Another example would be open interactive simulations and open courseware with full course content. What is open then? Open means free and involving certain permissions, also accessible online. These permissions are often referred to as the five Rs. Here's what you can do with open educational resources. You can retain them, you can reuse them, also revise them and remix several resources, redistribute them among others. Now, these permissions in OER are enabled by using open licenses. Creative Commons licenses are the most widely used type of open licenses. They consist of several elements that can be remixed to create special licenses. By using these licenses, the author indicates what is and is not allowed to be done with their resource. Many of your everyday teaching resources are actually licensed with Creative Commons licenses, like OpenStacks textbooks, Wikipedia, Khan Academy and TED videos. Why should you use open educational resources? Well, first of all, they are learner-oriented and allow you to engage in student-centered pedagogy. They are customizable and more dynamic, allowing you to update and localize the content. They are more sustainable and open to easier reuse. They enable quicker and easier transition to online and blended education. They are resource-saving for teachers and students. They are more inspiring and helping you to be innovative. They enhance academic freedom of teachers and students, allowing for greater choice and variety. They help you contribute to open science and, very importantly, they are accessible to all, without legal or financial barriers, and they support lifelong learning. Now, how can you use OER in your teaching? First of all, you can adopt already existing resources without any major changes. Or you can go ahead and adapt them, customize, localize and update them. You could create your own open resources and share them with others. Or you could combine a few existing resources with your own content. To translate this into action, you could start with small steps and engage with open educational practices. Try and replace your traditional textbook with an open one or with several open chapters. Integrate supplementary OER as self-study materials for your students. Use open pedagogical approaches to co-create reusable assignments together with your students. Let your students collaborate on adapting or creating new open materials, for example, a video or a collection of notes. Share your OER under an open license with the rest of the world. We encourage you to start small and to innovate. Now, where would you look for open educational resources? A great place to start at would be websites such as OER Commons. It's a public repository of open educational resources, also a tool for creating and uploading your own resources. You can search for supplementary materials for different courses of different levels here. Another highly recommended resource to check is Edisources, a Netherlands-specific search engine with materials in Dutch and in English from your peers across the country. If you're looking for open textbooks to reuse in your courses, the best place to go to would be Open Textbook Library. It's a collection of open textbooks from different subjects that often contain detailed faculty reviews. If you're looking for openly licensed images and other multimedia, we encourage you to use CC Search Engine. Here you can also filter your search results by a relevant open license. All of this might seem a bit overwhelming. Where should you start? To begin with, you could explore the OER in your narrow subject area. Reading community reviews of available OER could help a lot too. Once you've found something, you should determine if you need to edit or adapt it in any way. And if you get stuck, you can always get help at the University Library. OER and open education are becoming more and more mainstream and there is much to learn and more opportunities to discover. Are you interested in diving deeper? You can get support at the University of Groningen Library. You can contact our education specialists. Attend one of our webinars and check out our OER LibGuide. Remember that open is a process, so good luck exploring and using open educational resources. Thanks for watching!