Research Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Welcome!

Helpful Links

Creating OER

80 Open Education Resource (OER) Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives "80 online resources that you can use to learn how to build or participate in a collaborative educational effort that focuses on publication and development of those materials."
Authoring Open Textbooks "This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools."
A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students "A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources. "
OER Authoring Tools (SUNY Empire State College) "A clearinghouse of OER, including learning object repositories, open course repositories, scholarly repositories, open textbooks, and information about open learning/education in general."
Open Education Self Publishing Guide (BC Campus) "The BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide is a reference for individuals or groups wanting to write and self-publish an open textbook.This guide provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook. "

OER Repositories

Digital Public Library of America "Discover 34,536,122 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States"
Educational Resources from the Library of Congress "The Library of Congress offers classroom materials and professional development to help teachers use primary sources from the Library's vast digital collections."
Galileo: Open Learning Material
MERLOT "The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder webpages, together with associated comments, and bookmark collections"
National Science Digital Library
Oasis "Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 88 different sources and contains 352,345 records."
OER Commons "From a single point of access in OER Commons, you can search, browse, and evaluate resources in OER Commons' growing collection of over 50,000 high-quality OER. "
OER Metafinder "The OER Metafinder performs a simultaneous search across 21 different sources of open educational materials."
Open Access Publishing in European Networks "The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences."
Open Course Library "The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts."
Open Education catalog (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
Open Humanities Press
OpenLearn Courses
Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie Mellon University) "The concept of the Open Learning Initiative came from the idea of integrating Carnegie Mellon’s expertise in cognitive tutoring into whole online courses that would stand on their own and enact instruction. "
Open Washington "An open educational resources network for Washington State Community and Technical College (WA CTC) faculty."
The Orange Grove "The Orange Grove repository is Florida's digital repository for instructional resources."
Public Domain Review
Wiki Educator "WikiEducator is a community project working collaboratively with the Free Culture Movement towards incremental development of open educational resources."

The What and Why of Open Educational Resources (OER)?

According to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) from their 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Educational in Developing Countries:

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium - digital or otherwise - that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions."

Why OER?

Access: Students can instantly access, copy and share reading material.
Cost: They save money at a time when textbook prices and tuition are rising dramatically.
Customizable: These resources can be tailored for your unique learning environment.
Easily Updated: Changes can be made and uploaded nearly instantaneously.
Supplemental Material: OER materials often include educational material to supplement a book/textbook.

Challenges

Quality: Material must be thoroughly evaluated to ensure accuracy and quality standards are upheld.
Outdated Material: It is imperative to check whether content is timely and publication dates listed.
Stability: Is the site hosting material stable and will it be maintained in the future?
Copyright: Some material that may not be true open content can make its way onto OER pages. This must always be double checked.

Finding OER

1. Take the time to search and explore your options. Finding high quality, timely, and relevant material may take some time. In the same way that you need time to conduct any academic research, finding the best OER will be a process.

2. Search multiple repositories. Although some material may hosted on multiple OER pages, you will find material that is unique to certain pages.

3. Ask colleagues in your department. Find out who has used OER textbooks and other material in the past, and find out what they would recommend.

4. Consider utilizing more than one resource. Although there may be one textbook that replaces the costly, physical one you used in the past, you may also consider using a variety of material, including multimedia. Don't forget that many OER repositories include supplemental material to go along with a text.

5. Reach out to your subject-area liaison librarian. They can be a great resource to help you find the right OER for your class. Don't hesitate to reach to this person. If you don't know who your subject liaison librarian is, check here.

6. Don't give up! It takes time to explore the vast array or what's currently available, and the process can be overwhelming at first. Give yourself time and be sure to reach out if you need assistance.

Open Educational Resources (OER): Welcome!

Helpful Links

Creating OER

OER Repositories

The What and Why of Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Finding OER

OER Intro Video

Ask a Librarian Now!

OER News