LibGuides: Teaching and Learning Collection: Open Educational Resources

What are Open Educational Resources?

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.” (Definition by UNESCO).

For more information on Open Educational Resources, check out our LibGuide.

Open Educational Resources Websites

Open Textbook Library
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.
OER Commons: Open Textbooks
Free, adaptable, openly licensed textbooks and supplemental resources
Open Washington: Open Educational Resources Network
Learn more about OER and where to find OER textbooks for your class.
TED Talks
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas in the form of short, powerful talks (usually 18 minutes or less) that are often suitable for sparking class discussion or research efforts.
OpenStax
Initiated by Rice University, their free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed to ensure they meet the scope and sequence requirements of college courses.
Lumen Learning
Supports faculty in identifying and selecting high quality OER, aligning these to learning outcomes, and assembling them to create OER-based courses.
State University of New York (SUNY) Open Textbooks
With the initiative of the SUNY Libraries, Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo, manages and maintains Milne Open Textbooks, a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.