Open Educational Resources
Open educational resources (OER) are free teaching and learning materials that you can use, adapt and share.
Why use OER?
The financial burden of traditional textbooks has real impacts on student sucess and retention. OER not only improve access to learning materials, they allow you to design more flexible experiences for your students.
Get started on finding, teaching with, and creating OER with The OER Starter Kit.
Finding OER
Your subject librarian can help with finding a suitable OER to replace or augment your textbook, or search an OER respository:
- B.C. Open Collection
- The BCcampus OER repository hosts lists of general and subject specific OER.
- MERLOT
- California State University repository of textbooks, case studies, quizzes and more with tools to create or adapt resources.
- Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)
- SUNY-Geneseo meta-search of over 80 different OER sources.
- OER Commons
- Diverse college-level materials. Includes a tool called Open Author for creating and sharing text or multimedia learning resources.
- Open Textbook Library
- Download and adapt free, open textbooks. To be included, textbooks must be in use at multiple higher education institutions, or be affiliated with a higher education institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.
- OpenStax College
- Free repository from Rice University with faculty-authored and peer-reviewed online textbooks for introductory courses in mathematics, science, and social science disciplines.
- PressBooks
- Free searchable catalog. Easy to copy, revise, remix, and redistribute any openly licensed content found here using Pressbooks’ publishing platform.
- Online Education Sites
- Course notes, reading and assignment ideas, and multimedia components that may have an open license:
Evaluating OER
Use our Faculty Guide for Evaluating Open Educational Resources checklist [PDF] or look for a description of the peer review process on the OER platform website. For example MERLOT’s peer-review process and how that is applied to an OER textbook.
Many OER include user reviews. Reviews generally include the name, occupation, and institution of the reviewer as well as a detailed evaluation following an assessment rubric. See an example of user reviews for an OER textbook on the Open Textbook Library.
Create Your Own OER
If you cannot find a resource that fits your course, you can create or adapt your own.
- Revise existing OER to match your syllabus
- Combine materials from different sources.
- Develop original content for your course.
We provide DUNE:DigitalUNE as an open publishing platform for sharing your work.
Mini-grants are available for faculty who review, adopt, modify, or create OER.
Resources for Creating & Modifying OER
- Authoring Open Textbooks: A Guide for People Who Want to Make Open Textbooks
- Getting started checklist, case studies from publishing programs, guide to textbook organization and elements, writing resources, and an overview of useful tools.
- Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know
- Five-step guide for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types.
- BCCampus Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit
- Make your content accessible to all students with practical guidance for creating inclusive materials.
- Finding the Right Platform
- Compares ten open-source publishing platforms to help you determine the best repository for your work.
- Creative Commons License Chooser
- Choose the most appropriate Creative Commons license for your work.
Questions & Help
If you have questions about using or creating OER, please contact Scholarly Communications Librarian Sonya Durney.
