Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are openly available learning materials such as textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. 

OERs are particularly beneficial to both students and educators within the Higher Education because they;

• increase transnational and cross-institutional collaboration;
• enable the sharing of knowledge;
• save time and duplication;
• contribute to new pedagogical practices, and
• increase access to education.

Examples of OERs

Analyzing Grammar in Context introduces users to “patterns of English grammar and their influence on sentence structure, punctuation, and style.” It was written by a number of UNLV faculty and employee authors including Ed Nagelhout, Denise Tillery, Lauren Cagle, Sarah E. H. Lyons, Homer Simms, & Shannon Peevey in support of ENG 411B: Principles of Modern Grammar.

 

Principles of Macroeconomic Second Edition covers the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory macroeconomics courses. The text also includes many current examples, which are handled in a politically equitable way. It is one of many examples of free online textbooks available via OpenStax. 

 

ChemCollective's Virtual Lab provides a free virtual lab environment for chemistry students. It is part of ChemCollective, a collection of virtual labs, scenario-based learning activities, tutorials, and concept tests. 

Further reading

SPARC (2017). OER Mythbusting. Washington, DC: SPARC. sparcopen.org/our-work/oer-mythbusting

Griffiths, R., Mislevy, J., Wang, S., Ball, A., Shear, L., Desrochers, D. (2020). OER at Scale: The Academic and Economic Outcomes of Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree Initiative. Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.

Did you know…

• The high cost of some course materials can impede students’ academic success.
• The cost of textbooks is rising at a rate of 4 times inflation.
• 7 out of 10 students don’t purchase a required textbook during their academic career because of cost.
• 60% of students have delayed purchasing textbooks until they’ve received their financial aid.

By including OERs in your courses, you will not only help reduce overall costs, your students will also:

• Have access to course materials on the first day of class.
• Can read, highlight, and take notes in the format that works best for them. 
• Can easily read course materials online, on eReaders like Kindle, or download and print them.

Student testimonials

Faculty testimonials 

While it is possible to search for OERs using a generic search engine like Google, there are also a growing number of OER repositories that collect OERs developed at colleges, universities, and K-12 institutions around the world. Many of these repositories include a community rating system which can be helpful when reviewing possible OERs for adaptation, but there are also a number of OER evaluation rubrics that you can use to assist in your assessment.

When looking for eligible OER materials for your course, make sure to find out what license a creator has selected for their work. Creative Commons licenses, such as those in this chart, determine how an item was intended to be re-used and shared. If you do not see an open license, be aware that copyright law will still apply, and it is best to request permission before making use of this material. 

Open textbooks

• American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) Open Textbook Initiative
  The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) seeks to encourage the adoption of open source and open access mathematics textbooks. The AIM Editorial Board has developed evaluation criteria to identify the books that are suitable for use in traditional university courses. The Editorial Board maintains a list of Approved Textbooks which have been judged to meet these criteria.
• BC Campus
  This curated selection of open educational resources (OER) can be accessed by educators in B.C. and beyond. They can be used in learning management systems or in the classroom. All the materials are openly licensed, so they are free and can be customized and shared. New courses and textbooks are added regularly.
• Big Ten Open Books
  Big Ten Open Books is a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. All titles in the Big Ten Open Books are open access - free to read and reuse.
• Directory of Open Access Books
  The collection includes over 107,000 peer-reviewed books. The community-driven discovery service indexes and provides access to scholarly open access books. This helps users find trusted books and open access book publishers.
• Internet Archive Open Source Textbooks
  The Internet Archive offers over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 1.3 million modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.
• Knowledge Unlatched
  A pioneer in a crowdfunding model that enables libraries worldwide to support the open access publication of scholarly books and journals. The Knowledge Unlatched program has made thousands of titles freely available to readers everywhere, demonstrating the power of collective action to advance open scholarship.
• Library of Congress Open Access Books
  The books in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. The books in this collection were published under open access licenses or donated to the Library of Congress without restrictions. Books may be read online or downloaded as a PDF or as an EPUB.
• LibreTexts
  Over 2,000 textbooks spanning diverse disciplines are included in LibreTexts. The platform provides tools for faculty and scholars to develop and tailor content to their learning objectives. The online platform can be used for construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER).
• MERLOT
  Free textbooks, course modules, and assignments searchable by subject and audience level.
• Milne Open Textbooks (formerly Open SUNY)
  Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo manages and maintains Milne Open Textbooks, a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.
• OhioLINK Open Course Content Library (Textbooks)
  A collection of open textbooks organized by OhioLINK, including a smaller collection of Ohio-produced open textbooks.
• Open and Free Content on JSTOR
  Featuring journals, books, primary sources, and images that anyone can access—curated with libraries, museums, and publishers to support research, teaching, and discovery. Thousands of DRM-free open access ebooks from leading scholarly publishers are available on the platform.
• OpenStax (Rice University)
  OpenStax, a non-profit of Rice University, is the largest publisher of free, peer-reviewed textbooks. The collection includes a range of free, peer-reviewed, digital textbooks in key learning areas. In addition, there are affordable, high-quality, peer-reviewed learning materials and interactive learning technologies for high school and college courses.
• Open Textbook Library (University of Minnesota)
  Includes textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality.
• Pressbooks
  Pressbooks is a platform for publishing open textbooks, and they have a searchable directory of content created using their platform. Search with your discipline or course topic in mind.
• Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg is a library of over 75,000 free eBooks. Free epub and Kindle eBooks can be downloaded or read online. You will find the world's great literature, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for enjoyment and education.
• Sources for Full Text Classics (Eastern Michigan University)
  The source includes a collection of websites for the discovery of classic works that can be read for free online.
• Wikibooks
  Wikibooks is an open-content textbook collection. The collection includes over 3000 textbooks that anyone can use or edit.

Open courseware

• John Hopkins School of Public Health Open Courseware
  Provided by John Hopkins University, JHSPH OCW offers open materials and images from more than a hundred courses on public health education and research.
• LibreTexts
  One of the largest OER platforms, course materials are available from across multiple disciplines, including Biology, Chemistry, Humanities, Mathematics, Physics, and Social Sciences. All textbooks are peer-reviewed and regularly updated through a dynamic, wiki-based architecture and a collaborative community-driven approach. Faculty can discover and adopt existing textbooks, remix content to create custom materials, or construct entirely new textbooks using existing authoring tools. 
• MERLOT
  Free textbooks, course modules, and assignments searchable by subject and audience level.
• MIT Open Courseware
  MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
• OER Commons
  A digital library that connects to over 500,000 open educational resources from around the world. This is supported by data that includes user reviews, ratings, and usage statistics. There are built-in authoring tools that allow faculty to create personal collections and remix existing materials. Educators can also learn from each other through the platform’s social networking features. The OER Commons is both a course materials repository and a community for the application of OER.
• Open Michigan
  A range of subject areas from the University of Michigan.
• OpenStax
  A free, peer-reviewed textbook repository based at Rice University for high-enrollment college courses. Over 50 textbooks covering introductory courses in Biology, Chemistry, Economics, History, Math, Physics, Psychology, and Sociology are available through the platform. Faculty experts review each textbook through a rigorous peer review process. Resulting textbooks are available through an in-app browser view, PDF download, and low-cost print editions. Supplementary resources such as class presentations and learning management system integration packages are available through OpenStax. The course materials in OpenStax has been used by over 6 million students using with a documented savings exceeding $1.5 billion in textbook costs.
• Open Textbook Library
  Over 900 openly-licensed textbooks available through the Open Textbook Library. This platform is managed by the University of Minnesota and organized by academic discipline. Some added features include, detailed faculty reviews regarding the accuracy, relevance, clarity, and pedagogical effectiveness of each textbook. The collection includes materials for the Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics, Medicine, Science, and Social Sciences. Many of the textbooks also offer editable formats for customization and low-cost print options.
• Open Yale Courses
  Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.
• Stanford Engineering Everywhere
  Provided by Stanford University, these courses are centered around Engineering and Information Technology.

Open journals

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  DOAJ is an online directory of high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals.
• Elsevier Open Access Journals
  A–Z directory of Elsevier 's open access journals.
• Open Science Directory
  About 13000 scientific journals are now available in the Open Science Directory.
• Oxford Open Journals
  Open access journals by Oxford University Press mainly in the science area.
• SpringerOpen
  Springer's open access journals in the following subject areas - science, technology, medicine, the humanities and social sciences.
• Taylor & Francis Open Access
  Collection of Open Access journals published by Taylor & Francis.
• Wiley Open Access
  Wiley Open Access publishes online journals in biological, chemical and health sciences.

Open images

• Flickr Commons
  Visual treasures from the world's public photography archives
• Gratisography
  Free high-resolution pictures
• Morguefile
  Over 350,000 of free stock photos for commercial use
• Pexels
  A collection of free stock photos
• Pixabay
  Over 970,000 of free stock photos
• Unsplash
  Free high-resolution photos