Cultural Responses to Open Licences and the Accessibility and Usability of Open Educational Resources

Abstract: This paper addresses some of the licensing issues raised by creating and licensing Open Educational Resources. Flexibility and ease in accessing educational resources, remixing and embedding them in other, more culturally specific materials, is central to the OER movement. Flexibility can only achieved through a combination of resource design and licensing models. The most popular licensing model for OER content is the Creative Commons suite of licenses and most OER providers either use licenses taken from the Creative Commons suite or have developed a license closely modeled on a CC original but adapted to suit their needs, for example the Creative Archive in the UK.