Glossary

Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" something. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i.e. unassisted) and "indirect access" meaning compatibility with a person's assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (Source: Wikipedia.org)

The ALMS Framework provides a way of thinking about those technical choices and understanding the degree to which they enable or impede a user's ability to engage in the 5R activities permitted by open licenses.

A word or phrase that can be inserted as an attribute in an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document to tell website visitors the nature or contents of an image. (Source: WhatIs.com)

The process by which a content user gives proper credit to the original creator of a work when a portion of that work is reused or adopted outside of its original context. Attribution typically includes a link to the original work and information about the author and license.

A model for designing instructional materials where the instructor or designer begins the design process with a focus on the desired results (i.e., the outcome) of instruction. (Source: Learning-Theories.com)

A code Snippet is a programming term that refers to a small portion of re-usable source code, machine code, or text. Snippets help programmers reduce the time it takes to type in repetitive information while coding. Code Snippets are a feature on most text editors, code editors, and IDEs.

A set of intellectual property laws that give the rightsholder of a work (usually the author) exclusive rights over the reproduction, reuse, remixing, display, performance, and redistribution of their work.

A license permits users to certain rights over a copyrighted work. These can be exclusive (allowed for individual groups) or nonexclusive (allowed for all users). Licenses can be restricted by certain factors such as purpose, territory, duration, and media (Source: Findlaw.com).

The final outcomes that an instructor expects their students to gain by the time the students complete a course.

A set of open licenses that allow creators to clearly mark how others can reuse their work through a set of four badge-like components: Attribution, Share-Alike, Non-Commercial, and No Derivatives.

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

A work based on or derived from one or more already existing works. Common derivative works include translations, musical arrangements, art reproductions, and abridgments. (Source: USLegal.com)

A legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright protected works in certain circumstances. In Canada, this is known as Fair Dealing.

The practice or policy of including people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those who have physical or mental disabilities and members of minority groups. (Source: Oxford living dictionary)

A piece of software that manages, analyses, and runs educational courses. Canvas and Blackboard are two popular examples.

The process by which a rightsholder (usually the creator of a work) dictates that others can reuse their work in specific ways.

a mixture or fusion of disparate elements.
"the movie becomes a weird mash-up of 1950s western and 1970s TV cop show"
a recording created by digitally combining and synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two or more different songs.
"a classic dancefloor mash-up"
Computing
a web page or application created by combining data or functionality from different sources.
"a mash-up that mixes CNN news with links to Wikipedia articles"

A model by which content creators make their scholarly outputs free to access without cost to users. This can be done either by publishing content with an OA publisher or by sharing a copy of the content on an open repository.

Practices which encourage the development of openness, community engagement, transparency, responsibility, sharing, and accountability in education. (Source: Open Education Practices [Wikibooks])

Free educational materials that are openly licensed to enable reuse and redistribution by users.

A copyright license which grants permission for all users to access, reuse, and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.

A licence is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work (whether sound, text, image or multimedia). It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open licence is one which grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions. (A full set of conditions which must be met in order for a licence to be open is available in the Open Knowledge Definition 1.0.). For example, a piece of writing on a website made available under an open licence would be free for anyone to: print out and share, publish on another website or in print, make alterations or additions, incorporate, in part or in whole, into another piece of writing, use as the basis for a work in another medium – such as an audio recording or a film, and do many other things …

Openly licensed works are hence free to be shared, improved and built upon! The exact permissions granted depend on the full text of the open license that is applied.

A set of pedagogical practices that include engaging students in content creation and making learning accessible to all.

An umbrella term for a movement comprised of a variety of practices aiming to remove barriers for sharing any kind of research output, including resources, methods, or tools created at any stage of the research process. (Source: FosterOpenScience.eu)

denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.

Software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. (Source: OpenSource.com)

An openly licensed and free to access textbook; an OER meant to be used as a textbook for a course.

A work which is not covered under copyright law, whose copyright has expired, or which has been dedicated to the public domain by its rightsholder is said to be in the public domain.

Shareware is a type of proprietary software which is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost with usually limited functionality or incomplete documentation but which can be upgraded upon payment. Shareware is often offered as a download from a website or on a compact disc included with a magazine. Shareware differs from freeware, which is fully-featured software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available; and free and open-source software, in which the source code is freely available for anyone to inspect and alter.

Source code is generally understood to mean programming statements that are created by a programmer with a text editor or a visual programming tool and then saved in a file.

The outcomes that an instructor expects their students to display at the end of a learning experience (an activity, process, or course). (Source: Elhabashy, 2017).

Textbooks are the central spot for integrated content into our library and are identified by "Book:" in their titles.

Textmaps are specialized remixes that are constructed to follow the organization of existing commercial textbooks. Textmaps facilitate adoption by faculty that are unable to switch from a commercial textbook to an OER alternative; these texts are identified by "Map:" in their titles.

Turing completeness is a concept from theoretical computer science. It tells you how powerful a programming language is. Not in terms of performance or maintainability or how rich its ecosystem is. A programming language is Turing complete if you can implement any possible algorithm with it.

A process intended to design products that are usable by all people,with or without disabilities, to the greatest extent possible (Edyburn, 2015).

A framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on the concept that, by providing multiple ways of engaging with content, the diverse educational needs of learners can be met.