Why OER?
- 5 Things You Should Read about Open Educational ResourcesA compilation from ACRL
- OER MythbustingSPARC debunks the top myths about OER in higher education.
- Open Education Fact SheetFrom SPARC, The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
- Open TextbooksFrom Student PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups)
OER Metafinder
George Mason University Libraries has created the OER Metafinder, a robust search engine for discovering OER resources. The Mason OER Metafinder searches sixteen targets in real-time, returning the top several hundred or so relevant hits from each site. Because it is a real-time search, it takes a bit longer than searches of pre-indexed content; however, as compensation the results returned are absolutely up-to-the-minute for each search target. Additional results will trickle in as the search continues running and you begin examining your results.
OER Research
- Open Education Group: Review ProjectThe Review Project provides a summary of all known empirical research on the impacts of OER adoption.
- OER Research HubThe Open Education Research Hub (OER Hub) are leaders in researching the impact of open educational resources (OER) on teaching and learning practices. Our aim is to raise the quality and profile of research in this field. OER Hub has three key objectives: 1) To build capacity in the OER research domain; 2) To conduct research into OER related issues; 3) To produce resources for the OER research community.
Subject Guide
What are Open Education Resources?
As defined by UNESCO (2002 Forum on Open Courseware):
- “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. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work.”
As defined by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation:
- "Teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."
OER Resources
- HippoCampusHippoCampus.org is a free, core academic web site that delivers rich multimedia content--videos, animations, and simulations--on general education subjects to middle-school and high-school teachers and college professors, and their students, free of charge.
- The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)Real-time federated search for OER content
- MERLOTThe MERLOT project began in 1997, when the California State University Center for Distributed Learning (CSU-CDL at www.cdl.edu) developed and provided free access to MERLOT (www.merlot.org). MERLOT promotes open education resources for teaching and learning with its collection of discipline-specific learning materials. Materials are added by MERLOT members after a peer-review process.
- National Science Digital LibraryThe National Science Digital Library provides high quality online educational resources for teaching and learning, with current emphasis on the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines—both formal and informal, institutional and individual, in local, state, national, and international educational settings. The NSDL collection contains structured descriptive information (metadata) about web-based educational resources held on other sites by their providers. These providers have contribute this metadata to NSDL for organized search and open access to educational resources via this website and its services. Most resources in the library adhere to principles of Open Educational Resource (OER) access, although some resources are restricted to provider site membership, or may have a cost associated with them (indicated in the full record of the resource).
- OASISOpenly Available Sources Integrated Search) from SUNY Geneseo. Includes the ability to limit search results by license, type, subject, source, and reviews available.
- OER CommonsOpen Education Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials freely available for everyone to use, whether you are a teacher or a learner. This includes full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world. OER Commons is a dynamic digital content hub, offering a suite of OER implementation supports.
- Open.MichiganOpen.Michigan encourages researchers, learners, and instructors to maximize the impact and reach of their scholarly work through open sharing. Open.Michigan helps people find, use, and create openly licensed content and provides a space to share their educational content.
- Open Course LibraryThe 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. Some of our materials (also called open educational resources, or OER) are paired with low cost textbooks ($30 or less). Many of the courses can be taught at no cost to students. Unless otherwise noted, all materials are shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.OCL courses and materials have undergone testing for accessibility and have been designed using the industry-standard Quality Matters (QM) rubric for assessing the quality of online courses.
- Open CultureOpen Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. The site compiles content from online courses, movies, audio books, eBooks, and MOOCS – all freely available.
- Open Education ConsortiumThe Open Education Consortium is a worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing open education and its impact on global education. The Open Education Consortium realizes change by leveraging its sources of expert opinion, its global network and its position as the principal voice of open education. Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide. Open Textbooks lists texts by subject discipline. Also Free (but not Open) Copyrighted Textbooks listing is available.
- Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN)The Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN) provides free support and technical assistance to all grantees of the $2 billion Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College & Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program from the U.S. Department of Labor. OPEN services are provided by Creative Commons (CC), the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) and the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC), which have individual but complementary areas of expertise in openness and the design of educational resources. Funding comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The “Find OER” resources page provides an extensive list of sources for OER content plus search strategies.
- OpenStax CNXDr. Richard Baraniuk founded OpenStax (then Connexions) in 1999 at Rice University to provide authors and learners with an open space where they can share and freely adapt educational materials such as courses, books, and reports. Today, OpenStax CNX is a dynamic non-profit digital ecosystem serving millions of users per month in the delivery of educational content to improve learning outcomes. There are tens of thousands of learning objects, called pages, that are organized into thousands of textbook-style books in a host of disciplines, all easily accessible online and downloadable to almost any device, anywhere, anytime.
- Saylor AcademySaylor Academy’s mission is to open education to all. Focus is on open courses, open credentials, and open learning technologies. Maintains a library of over 100 open access textbooks – Saylor Academy Open Textbooks (http://www.saylor.org/books/).
- Teaching CommonsThe Teaching Commons brings together high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities. Curated by librarians and their institutions, the Teaching Commons includes open access textbooks, course materials, lesson plans, multimedia, and more.
- WikiversityWikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning.
- Writing CommonsA free, comprehensive, peer-reviewed, award-winning Open Text for students and faculty in college-level courses that require writing and research. Writing Commons helps students improve their writing, critical thinking, and information literacy. Founded in 2008 by Joseph M. Moxley, Writing Commons is a viable alternative to expensive writing textbooks. Faculty may assign Writing Commons for their composition, business, STEM/Technical Writing, and creative writing courses. Writing Commons houses seven main sections: Information Literacy, Research Methods & Methodologies, Writing Processes, Collaboration, Genres, New Media, and Style.
- XanEdu Customization PlatformXanEdu Customization Platform, a product of XanEdu Inc., is a service for higher education that allows faculty and administrators to create custom course materials from a variety of sources and present the assembled content in print or digital formats. An educator logs on to the XanEdu Customization Platform and selects content that they would like to use, either from the XanEdu library or from their own collection, with XanEdu helping to provide the necessary clearance. XanEdu creates the custom book in real-time, allowing faculty to view their assembled course materials (and the pricing to their students) immediately.