
Open educational resources (OER) are free and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes. They are free, customizable, and most importantly, students and faculty can retain them permanently.
Open Education "...is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge."
Smith, M. Casserly, C. , “The Promise of Open Educational Resources. ,” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 38, no. 5 ( 2006 ): 8-17.