Open Educational Resources (OER)

Steps for searching OER can be tedious and time-consuming; listed here are options before you start searching for OER.

Step 1. Before searching for OER, go through the following pages to discover open educational resources in your subject area

• OER Textbooks: Collections of textbooks designed with open licenses and for reuse, remix, and redistribute within courses for free. An open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online by its author(s). The open license sets open textbooks apart from traditional textbooks by allowing users to read online, download, or print the book at no cost.

• OER Repositories:  These are repositories of open educational resources covering multiple educational disciplines.  Open Repositories are websites that house open books, textbooks, lectures, tutorials, quizzes, tests, case studies, assessment tools, images, syllabi, simulations, online courses and other resources of educational value. One such  example is MERLOT.

• Open Courseware Collections: These are collections of materials submitted by faculty members at universities that are part of the Open CourseWare (OCW) movement. Open CourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high high-quality college and university-level educational materials. These materials are organized courses, and often include course planning materials and evalutaion tools as well as thematic content. Open CourseWare material are free and openly licensed, accessible to anyone, anytime via the internet.

Step 2. Depending on your course syllabus, decide whether to use an already existing textbook, or an open course or maybe a combination of open resources which best suits your needs.

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 61 different sources and contains 160,727 records. OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library in consultation with Alexis Clifton, SUNY OER Services Executive Director.  OASIS Development Team:  Allison Brown - Digital Publishing Services Manager; Bill Jones - Digital Resources & Systems Librarian; Ben Rawlins - Library Director.