Skip to Main Content

Open Educational Resources (OER)

This guide is intended to assist Oakland University faculty in learning about, finding and teaching with OER.

What are Creative Commons licenses?

Creative Commons licenses are legally enforceable licenses that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other right with the aim of expanding the range of things available for others to share, quote, adapt, and build upon.

Creative Commons licenses do two things:

  • They allow creators to share their work easily
  • They allow everyone to find work that is free to use without having to obtain permission

As long as you obey the terms of the license attached to the work, you can use Creative Commons licensed material without fear of accidentally infringing someone’s copyright. 

The nonprofit Creative Commons organization works to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing.

Why Use CC license?

Using a CC license enables for open educational resources to allow for the 5R's 

  • Retain
  • Reuse
  • Revise
  • Remix
  • Redistribute

When a creator or copyright holder assigns an open license to their work they are specifying how they want others to reuse it. Open licensing does not replace copyright. Open licenses work with copyright to promote shared use. This changes the copyright from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”  More info https://www.cccoer.org/learn/open-licensing/

How to use a CC license

  1. You can use the license chooser to determine which license is right for you. 
    Or
  2. Download creative commons license logos and use on your work