LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Home

OER Definitions

What is an Open Education Resource (OER)?

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. (Hewlett Foundation).

Zero Textbook Cost

ZTC, also known as Zero Textbook Cost or Zero Course Materials, are courses that make use of OER and other proprietary learning materials. These learning materials may be library resources or resources we just don’t have the rights to share.

Low-Cost

A low-cost course a course that costs students a low amount for course materials. This amount is determined by the institution. For example, several institutions consider a low-cost course when students spend a total of $40 or less per course.

OER Search Tools

These search tools can help you find an OER.

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)
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 97 different sources and contains 385,629 records.

OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
Mason OER Metafinder
The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources. Unlike other OER discovery sites (e.g, OER Commons, OASIS, MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.) with our Metafinder you aren’t searching a static database that we’ve built. Instead, the OER Metafinder launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 22* different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button.

Resources

This is a list of some OER resources.

Big List of Resources (Pitt)
A collection of OER resources from the University of Pittsburgh University Library System.
The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources - CCCOER
CCCOER is a growing consortium of community and technical colleges committed to expanding access to education and increasing student success through adoption of open educational policy, practices, and resources. We provide a community and resources to learn about the evolving practice of open education.
Lumen Learning
This OER-focused company provides open courses with "zero textbook cost." Their curriculum comes with all the OER students will require.
MERLOT II (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching)
MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy. The Health Sciences section provides access to more than 3,000 multimedia items from topics ranging from cancer to nutrition to veterinary medicine in formats such as animations, presentations and tutorials and much more.
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
OER by Discipline Guide: McMaster University
The OER by Discipline Guide: McMaster University is an in-progress (open creation) that lists a broad range of open educational resources organized by disciplines at McMaster University.
OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
OER for Nursing from California State Univ
The CSU OERN Mission Statement
To create an open resource repository of nursing educational materials covering diverse aspects of nursing
To promote global sharing of Nursing resources
To provide educational resources to enhance the capacities of nurses to diagnose and treat patients.
To provide free access to advances in basic and clinical research information in user friendly format.
OER Nursing (Northeast WI Tech College)
A list of OER resources for nursing from NWTC Library.
Open Course Library
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.
OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCE COURSE INITIATIVE AT CARL SANDBURG COLLEGE
The purpose of OERCI is to provide support and opportunities for Carl Sandburg College faculty to use OER's in their courses and save students money by reducing textbook requirements and increasing the number of textbook free courses.
Open Illinois
Open Illinois facilitates the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and supports training, advocacy, and coordination of cooperative effort for the benefit of members of Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) and other Illinois stakeholders. This centralized repository provides materials helpful to academic and research institutions in developing OER and advocating for adoption of OER on their campuses to reduce students costs.
Open Learning Initiative
OLI provides dozens of college-level courses, and a platform that enables research and experimentation with any aspect of the learning experience. From Carnegie Mellon University.
Open RN
The OER Nursing textbooks are written based on the State Nursing curriculum established by the Wisconsin Technical College System, and include: Pharmacology, Skills, Nursing Fundamentals, Mental Health & Community Concepts, and Management & Professional Concepts.
OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our first open source college textbook was published in 2012 and has since scaled to more than 20 books used by hundreds of thousands of students across the globe.
Open Textbook Network
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. The library currently includes 697 textbooks, with more being added all the time.
WikiEducator
The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative:
planning of education projects linked with the development of free content
development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning
work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs
networking on funding proposals developed as free content
World Digital Library
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.