Open Educational Resources
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
“Open Educational Resources 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.” - William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. They are resources that can be adopted, adapted, and used for free by students and faculty!
Why use Open Educational Resources (OER)?
The cost of education and textbooks has risen astronomically over the past 5 years (and even longer). Plus, some fields of studies are rapidly changing and textbooks can’t always keep up with the new information, updates, and technology. Watch Abbey Elder (Iowa State University)’s video on OERs.
Finding OER Materials
The first step is finding OER materials for your class. These can be books, articles, images, and videos! You might not be able to find your exact textbook, but you might find an alternative. Please note that not all subject matters have OER materials available.
These search multiple databases, collections, and other resources in a single search!
- Mason OER Metafinder (George Mason University)
- OASIS (State University of New York, Geneseo)
These locations offer centralized hubs, platforms, and bookshelves.
- OER Commons (ISKME)
- OpenStax (Rice University)
- MyOpenMath
- LibreTexts Commons
- Open Textbook Library (University of Minnesota)
There are various digital libraries that offer open access and public domain books for free! Some of them even have books in multiple languages.
Multimedia resources are also fair use and sometimes even public domain!
Evaluating OER Materials
Just like a good research paper, you should also evaluate your course materials, including OERs!
Concerned about accessibility? Check out these toolkits and manuals based on WCAG 2.2 AA.
Organizations and Research on OER
Want to find out more? Check out these organizations focused on OER.
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