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Open Educational Resources (OER)

This guide defines open educational resources and provides information for faculty considering using OER in their classes.

OER Repositories

OER Repositories:  These are repositories of open educational resources covering most of educational disciplines.  Open Repositories are websites which house open books, textbooks, lectures, tutorials, quiz/test, case studies, assessment tools, images, syllabi, simulations, online courses and other resources of educational value. One such  example is MERLOT.

OER repositories listed here cover a wide variety of educational disciplines. 

  • OER Commons curates best in class learning materials from around the world since 2007.  The OER Commons is a single search source that pulls from multiple OER collections, including MERLOT and Connexions.  It is a great first step in an OER search, but often more results can be found by searching the specific collection.  
    • Users can create collections of existing content and create their own content pages to share.
    • The OER Commons is a supported by ISKME (the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education).
    • Recommended for the Business, Education, History, Life Sciences, Psychology and Sociology subject areas.
  • Lumen Learning: Lumen Learning is dedicated to facilitating broad, successful adoption of OER, contains courses in vast subject areas.
  • OpenStax CNX (formerly Connexions) includes lectures, assignments, and written educational materials.  Content can be created in the Connexions interface and housed within the Connections servers.  Users can create collections of existing content and create their own content pages to share. 
    • Connexions also houses the CollegeOpenStax textbooks, allowing users to create customized versions of the books - selecting specific content and adding their own.
    • This collection is hosted and supported by Rice University since 1999, with grants from  William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Maxfield Foundation, and the Connexions Consortium.
  • MERLOT (merlot.org) is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community. MERLOT was opened in 1997 and is supported by the California State University System.  
    • MERLOT does not house content, but is a collection of links to other content.  The materials can be ranked and many are peer-reviewed.  There are discipline specific Communities that curate and review the content. 
    • You can create and share personal collections of content links.
    • Recommended for the Business, Education, Music, Political Science and Sociology subject areas. 
  • OpenWashington is a site designed to help you understand the OER movement and find OER.  They have links for finding textbooks, content, images and video, as well as stories from faculty who have adopted OER in their classrooms.  
  • Orange Grove is a online library of openly available instructional resources for Florida's educators. 
    • The Orange Grove does not house content, but is a collection of links to other content.
    • Only Florida educators are allowed to have registered accounts, but anyone can search for and use content linked in the Grove.  Some resources are only available to registered users. 
    • This site is predominantly focused on K-12 content but there are links to content useful for introductory courses.
  • Opolisci is a repository for different political science resources in the subfields of American politics, comparative politics, international relations, methodology, and political theory. The repository contains books, rubrics, and assessments.
  • Europeana is a gateway to European cultural assets, through this one site you can search for artworks, cultural items, archival collections from participating institutions all around Europe.  This site is a gateway, and once you have selected the items you want you will be redirected to the website of the institution that owns the item, and often these sites will not have English translations.  To find an item with the Creative Commons licensing you prefer - 1. Once you type in your initial search on the main page, you will have a list of filters on the left hand side of the page; 2. Use the "Can I use it?" and "By Copyright" filters to narrow down your results
  • Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media. It's all free. It's all enriching. But it's also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Open Culture's mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give access to high quality content.
  • 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.
  • Resources for K-12
    • Khan Academy - On a mission is to provide free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
    • Curriki - The Curriki community is as diverse as the world itself. Members from every country around the world are coming together on this platform to share, collaborate, and connect in order to make the best teaching and learning materials universally accessible and useful. Members are invited to go even deeper by working together in collaborative workspaces, called Curriki Groups.
    • Gooru - The Gooru Learning Navigator is a free, online tool that offers personalized pathways to help students reach their learning goals. 

Click here for OER Repository Directory created by Javiera Atenas through the OER Quality Project blog.

This is not a complete list and we wish to keep adding more repositories or websites when they become available. If you have used or know of any open educational resources that are not included here please contact the library and let us know.