Lesley University Library: Open Educational Resources (OER): Open Educational Resources

Using Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) can be used to enhance classroom experiences and reduce the cost of course materials for professors and students. This can be done by adopting the use of Open Books and Textbooks, utilizing freely accessible lectures and works in the public domain, and other Open Course materials. Finding OER for specific course needs can be done by searching through large OER Repositories with works authored by faculty from around the world.

Follow these steps to integrate OER into a course:

Image goes through six steps to integrate OER: Step 1 - Set aside time by searching for OER, which takes time and persistence; Step 2 - Look at your current text to see if it is available for free through library databases; Step 3 - Locate an OER text and check if an entire OER textbook already exists for a course; Step 4 - Browse many open repositories to see what content is available; Step 5 - Supplement by looking at the learning objectives for a class and find different materials for different topics; Step 6- Ask for assistance from a librarian to get help finding OER for your class.

"Six Steps to OER" by Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) Librarians, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License / Modified text from original.

OER Sources

OER Search Tools and Multidisciplinary Databases

Mason OER Metafinder

The Mason OER Metafinder, from George Washington University, searches 18 different sources of open educational materials, from OpenStax to the Internet Archive.
SUNY OASIS

SUNY OASIS searches open content from 73 different sources, including MIT Open Courseware, the Open Textbook Library, and Portland State University.
California Open Online Library for Education (Cool4Ed)

The California Open Online Library for Education (Cool4Ed) contains materials from Califoria's Digital Open Source Library, including textbooks, course materials, and journal articles.
Internet Archive Open Educational Resources

The Internet Archive's Open Educational Resources includes open courses, video lectures and supplemental materials.
OER Commons

OER Commons is a public library for OER that includes everything from open data sets to full courses across a range of disciplines and grade levels.
MERLOT

MERLOT is a project of the California State University Center for Distributed Learning. It contains tens of thousands of learning materials, including animations, case studies, textbooks, and presentations.
Open Course Library

The Open Course Library includes syllabi, activities, readings and assessments. All materials are shared under a Creative Commons license, but some materials are paired with low cost textbooks ($30 or under).
MIT OpenCourseWare Educator

MIT Open Courseware is a web archive of MIT course content. It contains open syllabi and assignments; some, but not all, course readings are also open.
Saylor

Course outlines for Open Course creation following the standards of Saylor Academy.
Orange Grove

The Orange Grove repository, is Florida's digital repository for instructional resources. The repository provides an environment for educators to search for, use, remix, share, and contribute educational resources.

Open Books and Textbooks

OpenStax College

OpenStax contains peer-reviewed, open source textbooks.
Open Textbook Library

College-level open textbooks collected by the University of Minnesota.
BC OpenEd

A curated collection of open textbooks reviewed by British Columbia educators.
Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg contains over 57,000 free eBooks that are in the public domain.
JSTOR Open Access Books
JSTOR's collection of 4,000 Open Access books that are freely available.
OAPEN Books

OAPEN is dedicated to peer-reviewed, open access books. OAPEN is the repository for hosting and disseminating books, and the Directory of Open Access Books is the discovery service for finding OA books.
Luminos

Luminos is California Press' Open Access publishing platform for books, following the same standards for selection, review, and production as California Press' traditional imprint.
Wikibooks

Open Textbooks in multiple languages, categorized by subject, completion status, and reading level.

Open Audio & Video

TED

TED Talks are Creative Commons licensed lectures and talks covering a range of topics.
PhET Science Simulations

Interactive simulations for science and math education, created at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Wikimedia Commons

The Wikimedia Commons contains images, music and video that are openly licensed or in the public domain.
HippoCampus

From the Monterey Institute of Technology and Education, HippoCampus contains a variety of resources aimed at high school and college level users.
Critical Commons

Critical Commons is a public media archive that advocates for the transformative use of media in education.
Internet Archive Moving Image Archive

This is the Internet Archive's collection of moving images, spanning everything from news broadcasts to full-length films./div>
Open Culture

Open Culture is a blog compiling open materials ranging from audio books to online courses to full-length movies.
Open Video Project

A large collection of searchable video content organized by genre, collection, color, duration, and sound. The Open Video Project is maintained by the Interaction Design Laboratory at the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Discipline Specific OER

Art & Art History

Getty Research Institute

The Getty Research Institute contains special collections of rare materials and digital resources for teaching and scholarship.
Boundless Art History

Lumen Learning now hosts the popular Boundless art history overview.
Art in the Twenty-First Century

PBS's award-winning television series Art in the Twenty-First Century, featuring interviews with many contemporary artists.
Smarthistory

Smarthistory contains videos and essays on art and cultural objects from a range of styles and time periods.

Education

CommonLit

CommonLit offers free instruction materials supporting literacy development in grades 3-12.
Curriki

Curriki has a library of openly licensed standards-aligned materials for K-12 education.
Share My Lesson

Share My Lesson is a website created by the American Federation for Teachers that houses over 420,000 lessons for K-12 educators.
CK-12

Open course materials for primary and secondary-level teaching
Edutopia
Edutopia contains videos about evidence- and practioner-based learning strategies in K-12 schools.
MERLOT

MERLOT also contains K-12 materials, which can be found by selecting the audience level under the Advanced Material Search.
MIT OpenCourseWare Textbooks

Textbooks used within MIT OpenCourseWare courses. Links are organized by course and include textbooks, self-published books, and course notes.

Humanities

Writing Commons

A peer-reviewed open resource for college students in courses that require writing and research.
English Composition I - Saylor

Saylor's complete open course on English Composition, also contains a list of open resources used within the course.
Writing Spaces Open Textbook Chapters

Writing Spaces is an open textbook resource for college-level writing courses.
MIT Open Courseware: Literature

MIT's Open Courses on Literature, some of which also contain open course materials for readings.
Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL)

COERLL is the University at Texas Austin's repository for open materials on language learning, containing materials for language learning from Arabic to Yoruba.
Acceso

Acceso is the University of Kansas Collaborative Digital Spanish Project's open-access learning environment for the learning of Spanish.
Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity

Open text from SUNY Textbooks on the study of literature, with reading guides for many great works.
Humanities Commons

Commons Open Repository Exchange (CORE) is a multidisciplinary repository including articles, digital projects, syllabi, and course materials.

Sciences & Mathematics

Science Forward

Science Forward provides videos and resources on critical thinking skills across the sciences.
ChemEd DL

Chemical Education Digital Library is a collection of digital tools and resources for teaching chemistry, including interactive models and textbooks.
American Institute of Mathmatics Textbooks

A collection of open textbooks that have already been evaluated to meet the criteria set by the American Institute of Mathematics.
myOpenMath

Collection of mathematics resources including homework, quizzes and tests.
National Science Digital Library

Collection on OER Commons curated by the National Science Foundation.
Chemistry LibreTexts

The Chemistry LibreTexts library is a principal hub of the LibreTexts project, a multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop open-access texts to improve postsecondary education.

Psychology & Sociology

Noba Textbooks

Noba, a project of the non-profit Deiner Education Fund, is a free platform for psychology textbooks and educational materials.
Principles of Social Psychology

Open textbook from BCcampus Open Education.
Abnormal Psychology

Open textbook created by Regis McCord, a professor at Northwestern Michigan College.
Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World

Sociology textbook that draws connections between sociology concepts and current events, social change, and social policies.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Library & Research Help

Guide Author

Using Open Educational Resources

"Six Steps to OER" by Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) Librarians, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License / Modified text from original.

OER Sources

Discipline Specific OER

Moriarty Library

Sherrill Library

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