Contributed by Izaak Diefenbach, Instructional Designer I (COE)
Are you looking for new content for your courses but want to keep costs down for your students and avoid potential copyright issues? Consider using Open Educational Resources. What is an Open Educational Resource (OER)? An OER is an educational resource in the public domain or available under an open license (such as Creative Commons), making it free to use, adapt, and distribute. Essentially, this means that OERs are free resources that you can incorporate into your courses and make available to your students.
Getting started with OERs can be intimidating. Where do you start? If you do a Google search, you’ll get over a billion results. It can be overwhelming. One great place to start is OER Commons. OER Commons is a project of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). They not only offer an extensive library of educational resources for all levels, but they also offer training and professional development resources to help you get started. OER Commons also provides access to Open Author, a system for creating your own OERs.
OpenStax is another excellent site with a variety of resources but primarily focuses on open textbooks. OpenStax is part of Rice University and provides peer-reviewed textbooks available for free in electronic formats or at low cost in print. They also offer OpenStax Tutor, a low-cost online courseware system that offers readings, assignments, and other assessments. BCcampus OpenEd is a project from British Columbia that also focuses on high-quality, freely available textbooks. They also have a variety of resources for instructors just getting started with using OERs.
Want to know what else is out there? The University of Pittsburgh Library has a Big List of Resources to help you explore the world of OERs a little further. This list includes resources for getting started, complete courses, open book libraries, multimedia resources, and other resource collections.
Are you ready to consider using Open Educational Resources in your courses, but you’re unsure how to incorporate them? Contact your designated Instructional Designer, and they’ll help you get started.
