Open Educational Resources
What are Open Educational Resources?
OER isfreely accessible online teaching and learning materials. They can be videos, textbooks,
quizzes, learning modules and more. Using OER in your classroom will improve student
engagement and success, provide immediate, equitable access to resources, save money
for your students, and provide you a venue to use flexible, high-quality learning
materials in your individualized curriculum.
- Open Textbook is a term used to indicate a Textbook that is fully OER.
- Public Resources are materials that are free, but licenses still protect the content in some way.
- Library Resources do not cost your students any money, and should also be considered as a means to lower the total cost of learning for your students.
- Low-cost resources: course materials that cost students $25 or less, in total.
Tips for finding and using OER and other affordable content:
- There are lots of OER materials out there. It takes time and persistence to find the ones that best fit your students' academic and research needs.
- Instead of focusing on the textbook that you want to replace, focus on what you want your students to know or do.
- Use the resources in this guide to find OER relevant to your discipline and courses. These links are great starting points but if you are not finding theOER that work for you, contact your librarian for personalized help.
- If you find an article in a library database that you want to use in a course, Library staff can help you with copyright considerations and provide access to the resource through reserves, embed in an online course, or on a website.
- Talk with your librarian with any questions you have about finding and using OER.
Short History of Open Educational Resources
Helpful Links
Below are some links to sources for use in your classroom. If you can't find what your looking for contact the library or the Instructional Designer for assistance in locating materials.
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OER CommonsA portal to a diverse range of open educational resources
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ConnexionsFree to use educational modules
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The Research ChannelResearch developments and insights from academia
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The Public Domain ReviewAll types of works that have come into the public domain and are free to use.
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EuropeanaOver 23 million digital objects including images and articles from over 2,200 European cultural institutions including museums, archives, libraries and newspapers.
