UNESCO’s definition of Open Educational Resources (OER) states that it is any type of educational material that is in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation. (UNESCO 2014: 1)
In essence, an OER is a teaching and learning resource created and licensed in such a way that promotes some or all of the following: free and easy retention, redistribution, reuse, revision, and remixing.
At UCT, there is significant support from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching for OERs.