Open Educational Resources (OERs) are basically anything you can utilize in a course that have no licensing restrictions or are “open”- from full courses to textbooks, from individual modules to media components. Unfortunately, there isn't a single tool that harvests all of the open resources out there for us. Below is but a sampling of resources that you can use to help identify OER materials that you should become familiar with.
1. Merlot: www.merlot.org
Merlot stands for “Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. It began with the CSUs, and turned into a collaborative effort between four states in the late 1990s. Today it hosts a huge range of open resources that can be incorporated into courses from the assignment-level to a full curriculum.
2. OpenStax Textbooks: openstax.org
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University. They serve as a publisher for Open Textbooks, publishing their first textbook in 2012. They currently have 27 textbook titles available. 3. Open Textbook Library: open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
The Open Textbook Library is run by the Open Textbook Network, which is associated with the University of Minnesota. With over 40 member institutions – spanning over 200 campuses, this resource is broad and amazing!
4. Lumen Learning Courses: courses.candelalearning.com/catalog/lumen
All LumenLearning courses are licensed through CC-BY, meaning you can take, edit, and adopt a course and any of its materials to meet your needs. This workshop is based on a course that was integrated in Lumen Learning.
5. Springer Open Journals: http://www.springeropen.com/journals
Springer has released and continues to release new academic journals with open licenses. This means you can adopt articles from these journals and use them in your courses without worrying about how fair use applies. In addition, SpringerLink (one of our library databases) now flags items with “open access” permissions.
Want more resources? Check out the chart below which divides online tools into three broad resource categories: textbooks, course outlines & modules, and media & other resources. Feel free to explore any of these resources on your own.
Please contact Rachel Jennings
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(661) 722-6300 ext. 6540