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Open Education Resources: An Overview: Resources

This guide will provide a brief primer on easy-to-access and freely available open education resources.

How Do I Find What I Can Use?

  • Dedicated Sites for Identifying Materials​ in Boxes Below

  • May come across OER “in the wild” (eg. Google search/libguides)​ - Identifiable by Creative Commons License or Public Domain Status

  • The Librarians can help with vetting resources

MIT Open Courseware

MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials​

  • Among the first repositories of OER (over 20 years)​

  • Makes available “virtually all of MIT course content”​

  • Because course content may be based off very specific use, requires creativity and patience when it comes to repurposing​

  • Peer Reviewed (Can see comments from reviewers)​

“Free Online Course Materials.” MIT OpenCourseWare, MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu/

MERLOT

MERLOT​

 

  • Wide Range of Subjects​

  • Lots of Resource Types​

  • Best for ‘Assembling’ Content from Multiple Resource Types​

  • Some Content May Be Tricky to Remix​

  • Note That Some Paid Sources Are Included in Links​

  • Clear Peer Review Process​

  • From University of California

Public Domain

  • Good For Some Primary Sources, Also eBooks and Video​

  • Archive.org​

  • Project Gutenberg​

  • Does Not Require Attribution​

  • Can Use The Creative Commons CC0 Mark​

  • Can Also Make Your Own Work Public Domain

OpenStax

OpenStax Homepage​

  • Whole package available (books with supplemental resources)​

  • Includes some course cartridges that can be loaded into Canvas​

  • Limited Number of Resources​

  • Peer Reviewed (Though Process Unclear)​

  • From Rice University​

  • Frequently Linked to by Other “Free Book” Resources​

“Free Textbooks Online with No Catch.” OpenStax, https://openstax.org/.

OER Commons

OER Commons​

  • Lots of Available Resources​

  • Somewhat Ad Hoc, so More Likely to See Dead Links​

  • Also More Likely to Find Something Not Available Elsewhere​

  • Some Reviews, But Not as Many As Other Sites