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Open Educational Resources (OER)

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

Discipline Specific OER