Faculty Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER)

The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes. [...] OER can originate from colleges and universities, libraries, archival organizations, government agencies, commercial organizations such as publishers, or faculty or other individuals who develop educational resources they are willing to share."

"7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources" by EDUCAUSE

Open Educational Resources 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.

- William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

There are three main sources for OER:

• OER Publishers and Producers
  • ​Examples: OpenStax, Lumen, Saylor
• OER Repositories
  • ​Examples: OERCommons, Merlot II, OrangeGrove
• Public Domain Materials
  • ​Examples: Project Gutenberg, Government Documents

• Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources 
  • "Our mission is expanding access to education by promoting awareness and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Over 200 colleges have joined the consortium and many more participate in our activities and use resources posted here.
• Learn OER - Open Washington Modules (OpenWA)

  Self-paced modules created by Open Washington to learn about OER and why it matters.

• Adopting OER in the Classroom

  A faculty resource for adopting, using and re-purposing openly licensed educational resources. Lumen Learning.

• Free to Learn

  An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials

• Introduction to Open Educational Resources

  OpenStax open textbook about OER

• OER Handbook for Educators

  This wiki-style handbook is designed to help educators find, use, develop and share OER to enhance their effectiveness online and in the classroom.

• OER Tutorial

  Open tutorial about OER by Algonquin College. This course is meant as a primer to anyone interested in learning more about the OER movement. It provides learning opportunities related to the origins of open resources, copyright and open licensing. It also acts as an overview of searching best practices both on the web and in OER repositories.