Open Educational Resources at Clermont

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

They offer free, easy-to-use copyright licenses that provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. You can license your own work under CC as well as find work (images, video, etc) created by others who are willing to share.

Dr. David Wiley, of Lumen Learning, developed the 5Rs framework to explain and remember permissions granted by an open license. This framework is a good guideline and if you are unable to practice any of the 5Rs with a resource it may not be open. The 5Rs outline that users have the right, with openly licensed material, to do the following:

• Retain - Make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
• Reuse - Use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
• Revise - Adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix - Combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mash-up)
• Redistribute - Share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)