Open educational resources

Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials which are licensed in ways that allow individuals and institutions to reuse, adapt and modify the materials for their own use. OERs can, and do include full courses, textbooks, streaming videos, exams, software, and any other materials or techniques that support learning. (OER Foundation)

How to use OER

OER can be downloaded, embedded, re-used or adapted to suit particular teaching or learning activities, depending on the licence.

• Using OER
  • Creative Commons Learn more about Creative Commons licences.
  • OER Research Hub OER evidence report 2013-2014 Building understanding of open education.
  • Open Educational Resources: A catalyst for innovation A report published 1 December 2015 by The OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation.
• Course resources
  • Community College Consortium Find open educational resources.
  • Cosmolearning Free educational website for students and teachers.
  • Creative Commons Convenient access to search services provided by other independent organisations.
  • Digital Commons Network Free, full-text, scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide.
  • iTunes U courses Educational arm of Apple’s iTunes store.
  • Jisc store Open and commercial educational resources from Jisc (United Kingdom) .
  • Lumen learning An open psychology textbook that includes chapters such as biological foundations of psychology, psychological disorders and personality.
  • Merlot Curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools.
  • MIT Open Courseware MIT’s course material published online.
  • Noba An online platform of open psychology textbooks; users can build a textbook from freely available chapters. Users must create an account.
  • OER Commons A public digital library of open educational resources and OER building tools.
  • OERu Open courses from the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland.
  • Open Professionals Education Network Save time and effort by reusing existing OER.
  • OpenLearn Free learning materials from Open University, United Kingdom.
  • The Orange Grove Florida’s digital repository for instructional resources.
  • Saylor.org Academy Over 100 university and professional level open courses.
  • TED ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’ Powerful video talks, usually 18-minutes or less.
  • Wikiversity Over 20,000 free learning resources.
  • XPERT (Xerte Public E-learning ReposiTory) Share and re-use e-learning resources.
  • YouTube Education Learning through videos and storytelling.
• Open textbooks
  • BCcampus OpenEd
  • College Open Textbooks
  • OpenStax
  • Open Textbook Library