LibGuides: For Faculty: Open Educational Resources

5 R's

"True" OER material does not have to be copyright-free or public domain, but generally must permit the 5 R's:

Reuse – use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
Revise – adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
Remix - combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
Redistribute - share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to another individual)
Retain – make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)

OER vs OA

By definition, all OERs are Open Access, but not all Open-Access materials qualify as OERs. Sometimes the distinction may not matter: Faculty may simply want to link to a video or exercise. An item may allow that without allowing all 5 R's of a true OER.

Faculty are advised to pay attention to the licensing of the specific material to determine whether the desired use is permitted.

Resources

Accessibility at UIW
This site serves as UIW’s hub for information about accessible technology. Accessible technology includes electronic documents, websites, videos, software applications, and hardware devices that can be used effectively by everyone, including students, faculty, staff, and visitors with disabilities. The UIW community is collectively responsible for assuring the technologies we choose, use, and create are fully accessible.
Higher Ed Accessibility Lawsuits, Complaints, and Settlements
Things to keep in mind. Higher educational institutions face liability for inaccessible web content and technologies.
How to Search for Openly Licensed Educational Resources - PDF version
An infographic from the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning

OER Commons This link opens in a new window
Instructional materials including tests, lessons, activities, syllabi, texts, and more covering a range of subjects. Search results can be filtered by Subject, Education Level, and Standard.

OER Starter Kit Workbook - Cuny
The OER Starter Kit Workbook is a remix of the OER Starter Kit to include worksheets to help instructors practice the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create open educational resources (OER).
OER Toolkit
From the Learning Portal at College Libraries Ontario, this toolkit provides information and tools to help faculty and library staff to engage with and sustain OER in their work and practice.
Open Educational Resources (OER) in Texas Higher Education, 2019
This report presents the results of an independent survey commissioned by the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas (DigiTex, formerly the Virtual College of Texas), in collaboration with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), to examine the landscape of OER programs, policies, and practices at higher education institutions in Texas. The survey was administered in May 2019 to all 158 two- and four-year public and private institutions across the state.
Open Educational Resources Meet Instructional Design
To find the best OER, consider the skills you're teaching, how content aligns with standards, ease of assessment, and whether you'll provide an active, creative experience.
The OER Starter Kit
This starter kit from Iowa State University has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER.
Open Educational Resources (OER) in Texas Statewide Playbook
The Open Educational Resources (OER) in Texas Statewide Playbook is a resource developed by practitioners and advocates actively involved in the labor of open education to guide new and expanding OER work at institutions of higher education.

OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search)
A search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 98 different sources and contains 368,237 records.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources.

CORE-Humanities Commons
CORE-Humanities Commons is a network for people working in the humanities. The CORE repository allows scholars to share content with Creative Commons licensing.
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Files deposited in CORE are stored in the Columbia University Libraries long-term digital preservation storage system.
eCampus Ontario Open Library
The eCampusOntario Open Library provides educators and learners with access to more than 250 free and openly-licensed educational resources.
GALILEO Open Learning Materials
Most works hosted in GALILEO Open Learning Materials have a Creative Commons license, allowing the reuse, redistribution, remix, and revision of these materials. To learn more about Creative Commons licenses, please visit the Creative Commons Licenses Page.
Hathi Trust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
MERLOT
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
OER Commons
A public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
Teaching Commons
The Teaching Commons brings together high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities. Curated by librarians and their institutions, the Teaching Commons includes open access textbooks, course materials, lesson plans, multimedia, and more.

OERTX Repository This link opens in a new window
Textbooks and online instruction materials for higher education covering a wide range of academic disciplines. Includes texts, lectures, syllabi, and more.

National Science Digital Library
Serving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.

MIT Open Courseware
MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects available on the Web, free of charge. With more than 2,400 courses available, OCW is delivering on the promise of open sharing of knowledge.
Open Course Library
A collection of high quality, free-to-use courses that you can download and use for teaching. All content is stored in Google docs making it easy to access, browse and download. *Always check the license*
Open Michigan
Open Michigan enables the University of Michigan community to make the products of its research, teaching, and creative work available to the world beyond campus. We are the home for all things open at the University of Michigan—including expertise and services for open educational resources, open data, and open publications.
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. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.
Utah State Open Courseware
Subjects include: Engineering; Education; Family, Consumer, & Human Development; Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences; Psychology; and Theatre Arts.

BCcampus OpenEd
Through BCcampus, British Columbia was the first province in Canada to implement an open education initiative, and we’ve been paving the way for the rest of the nation to take a collaborative approach to the creation of open educational resources (OER).
The Directory of Open Access Books
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB.
IntechOpen - Open Access Books
Open access books covering: Life Sciences, Health Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, Technology, Social Sciences, and Humanities
LibreTexts
The LibreText Project is a non-commercial open textbook organization initiated at the University of California, Davis. The LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society.
OAPEN Open Access Publishing in European Networks
The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.
OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and our library since scaled to more than 20 books for college and AP courses used by hundreds of thousands of students.
Milne Open Textbooks
Milne Open Textbooks (formerly Open SUNY Textbooks) is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants.
Open Textbook Library
Open textbooks are 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. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.

Search Creative Commons
Use the checkbox to choose modify or adapt and/or filter by license type.
Pixabay
Check their license for what is and is not allowed. https://pixabay.com/service/license/
Google Images
Tools --> Usage Rights --> Labeled for Reuse
*Please note, this is the internet...use caution and always double check the license*
Flickr: The Commons
"The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives."
Flickr: Creative Commons
Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.
Europeana Collections
You can browse for free images or check the licenses
ClipSafari
Check the licenses

Always check the licensing or usage policies before adding materials.

Creative Commons on Vimeo
Browse videos on Vimeo by Creative Commons License
PhET Interactive Simulations
PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations.
TED Talks
Pay attention to the Usage Policies: https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy
You can also find them in our databases as a No Additional Cost material.
Wikimedia Commons
A collection of 57,000,000+ freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. Always check the licensing.
YouTube
Search, and then filter by features: Creative Commons and Subtitles/CC

Anaconda
Anaconda offers a platform to perform Python/R data science and machine learning on a single machine.
Audacity
Audacity is a free audio editor that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
Brave
Brave is a web browser built on top of Google’s open source Chromium project that is designed to keep browsing activity private by automatically disabling website trackers and blocking pesky ads.
GIMP
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a free office suite, and a successor to OpenOffice.org (commonly known as OpenOffice).
Linux
Linux is an open-source operating system that can be downloaded from many different distributors.
Python
Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively.
R-Project
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.
SAS OnDemand
Free access to SAS software for statistical analysis, data mining and forecasting.
Shotcut
Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor for Windows only.
VLC Media Player
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

BC Campus Open Textbooks Review Criteria
Provides reviews that use the following criteria: Comprehensiveness, Content Accuracy, Relevance/Longevity, Clarity, Consistency, Modularity, Organization/Structure/Flow, Interface, Grammatical Errors, and Cultural Relevance. Additional information: Any other comments and what level would this text be appropriate.
Open Textbook Library Rubric
Provides reviews based on the BC Campus rubric for evaluation.
MERLOT Review Information
They have peer reviews that rate the material on content quality, effectiveness, and ease of use. They also provide user reviews.
OER Rubric from Achieve.org (Long)
Identifies eight criteria. Long version (11pg)
OER Evaluation Rubric from Achieve.Org (Chart)
Condensed chart (2pg)
Open Choice Review Template
A review template from Choice magazine for OER.
Quick Checklist from UofI
Very brief checklist. Keep accessibility in mind.
Checklist for Evaluating Open Educational Resources (OER)
A checklist developed by ACC Instructional & Faculty Development Department for OER.
OER Evaluation Criteria
Quick checklist from Affordable Learning Georgia.
Faculty Guide for Evaluating Open Education Resources
Checklist from the BCOER Librarians

OER in Texas Search

OER In Texas
OER created by Texas Institutions