Research Guides: Faculty Resources: Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources

According to UNESCO, "Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution." OER include curriculum maps, course materials, textbooks, streaming videos, multimedia applications, podcasts, and any other materials that have been designed for use in teaching and learning.

Short video produced by the Council of Chief State School Officers on December 13, 2016.

OER Repositories / Libraries:

ANTS: ANimated Tutorial Sharing Project
Libraries working together to create open source tutorials. The goal of the project is to create a shared repository of library, research, and information literacy tutorials.
Applied Math & Science Educational Repository
This repository deals heavily in math and science resources, but also gives users access to content dealing with subjects like history, education, and the fine arts.
CORA: Community of Online Research Assignments
Open access resources for faculty and librarians.
MERLOT II: Multimedia Resources for Learning & Online Teaching
Browse collections of learning materials and exercises by subject or visit discipline community portals.
New America: In Depth
Curated list of K-12 resources to start your OER search and discovery.
New Literacies Alliance
Addresses the new literacies required for academic success and lifelong learning. Lessons can be used as stand alone objects or packaged together.
OER Commons
A collection of open education resources from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME).
Open Learning Initiative
Offers high-quality, scientifically-based online courses and materials that are shared openly and freely so that anyone can learn or teach.
Open Michigan
Resources from the University of Michigan community to help you find openly-licensed images, video, textual materials, & other content.
OpenStax
View and share free educational material in small modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports or other academic assignments.
The Orange Grove
Florida's digital repository of open educational resources which allows users to find, remix, and share new materials with fellow educator.
Skills Commons
Digital library of free and open workforce training materials.
Teaching Commons
Open educational resources from leading colleges and universities.
WikiEducator
Online community for educators to develop free educational content that anyone can use, modify and distribute.

Sources for free, digital, and shareable course materials (unless otherwise noted):

Khan Academy
Offers courses in a variety of subjects, including math, science, art, economics, and the humanities. It provides short but effective videos, practice problems and tests for users to learn core academic concepts from preschool to high school and beyond. Content is freely available for personal, non-commercial use.
Lumen Learning
Supports OER adoption at K12 and higher education institutions in order to remove cost as a barrier to education. Lumen contributions to online open courses are licensed under CC BY.
MIT OpenCourseWare
Offers full online courses which include insight from instructors, lecture notes, textbook materials, assignments, exams with answers, and multimedia resources. All course content is downloadable.
Open Course Library
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.

More Sources:

Sources for Open Textbooks:

American Institute of Mathematics
Open textbooks that have been approved by the American Institute of Mathematics.
BCcampus Open Ed
BCcampus has curated a collection of open textbooks that align with the top 40 highest enrolled first and second year post-secondary subject areas in British Columbia. Many books have been reviewed by faculty and include ancillary resources. Particular strengths include
College Open Textbooks
The College Open Textbooks Collaborative maintains a catalog of open and/or affordable textbooks appropriate for lower division university classes. Some resources have been peer-reviewed.
Directory of Open Access Books
Books listed in DOAB are free to read and share. Please check the usage license if you want to re-use the contents of a book.
FLOSS Manuals
A free, collaboratively-built collection of manuals about free and open source software.
The Global Text Project
The Global Text Project is a joint project of the Terry College of Business of the University of Georgia and The Daniels College of Business of the University of Denver that publishes electronic texts for students in the developing world and maintains a database of links to books for such students
InTech
InTech is the publisher of one of the largest open access collection of books in the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine.
MIT OpenCourseWare: Online Textbooks
An index of online textbooks in MIT OpenCourseWare, including open-licensed electronic versions of print books, self-published online books, or course notes which are so thorough that they serve as an alternative to a conventional textbook.
Open Access Textbooks
The Open Access Textbooks Grant Project worked with others involved in open content to create a sustainable model for Florida and other states to discover, produce, and disseminate open textbooks.
OpenStax
OpenStax from Rice University offers free, online educational materials and textbooks, some of which can be printed at an affordable price.
Open SUNY Textbooks
A pilot open textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York that engages faculty as authors and peer-reviewers and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.
Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library at the University of Minnesota offers a catalog of open, peer-reviewed textbooks that can be downloaded for free.
Saylor Academy
In addition to other open educational content, Saylor Academy offers over 100 open textbooks under a variety of Creative Commons licenses.

Sources for open images, music, and sounds:

CC-Licensesd Music
Sites that offer music published under Creative Commons’ flexible copyright licenses
Creativity103s
Library of free abstract backgrounds, textures and design ideas
Flicker: Creative Commons
Browse or search through content under each type of license.
Getty: Open Content Images
Download thousands of images for free.
Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive
This digital library contains free movies, films, and videos, which include classic full-length films, daily news broadcasts, cartoons, and concerts.
Mutopia
Free sheet music.
NY Public Library
Free resources to share and reuse from the public domain collections.
OpSound
Sound effects and other audio sound bites
Pond5 Public Domain Project
Thousands of free media files for unlimited use.
Prelinger Archives
View thousands of public domain films. The collection includes films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions.
Royalty Free Graphic Resources
A resource list maintained by Dr. Cynthia Sistek-Chandler, Sanford College of Education, National University.
Wikimedia Commons
Digital repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files

Permissions and Licensing

5R Permissions of OER graphic

Creative Commons is an excellent way to share access to resources with colleagues. Use of Creative Commons materials may have some limits; read the license notes carefully and provide attribution using the CC logo.