FINDING OERS
A quick Google search for "open educational resources" pulls up hundreds of thousands of results. To save you some time and trouble, here are some OERs to get you started. I've divided the list into three categories: courses, collections, textbooks, dissertations, and videos.
OER COURSES
- Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative27 free and open courses from Carnegie Mellon University.
- CourseraMassive collection of over 1,800 open courses from 145 universities and colleges around the world.
- edXOver 900 free online courses from partners including Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley.
- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public HealthSearch OER Commons' collection of 82 courses from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
- Lumen LearningThis catalog contains openly-licensed course materials developed for the Open Educational Resources (OER) Degree Initiative, led by Achieving the Dream. Lumen maintains this content in the same condition it was provided to us by participating faculty and institutions.
- MIT Open CoursewareMIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content.
- MyOpenMathMyOpenMath is an online course management and assessment system for mathematics and other quantitative fields. MyOpenMath’s focus is providing rich algorithmically generated assessment to support the use of free, open textbooks like the ones listed on OpenTextBookStore.com.
- OASIS CoursesA search of OER courses from multiple platforms.
- Open Course LibraryA collection of high quality, free-to-use courses that you can download and use for teaching. Hosted by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
- Open Education Consortium CoursesSearch the OER courses offered by members of the Open Education Consortium.
- Open Yale CoursesFree and open introductory courses from Yale University.
- Penn State Repository of Open and Affordable MaterialsThese "courseware modules" represent substantial portions of the resources provided to students who register in participating Penn State classes. These resources are available for reuse by teachers and learners worldwide who do not intend to apply for admission, register for classes, or pursue a certificate or degree at Penn State.
- Saylor AcademySaylor Academy is a nonprofit initiative working since 2008 to offer free and open online courses to all who want to learn. We offer nearly 100 full-length courses at the college and professional levels, each of which is available right now — at your pace, on your schedule, and free of cost.
OER COLLECTIONS
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)Collection of over 2,000 academic peer-reviewed books from 280 academic publishers across the world.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)An online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access to over a million peer-reviewed articles.
- Free Online DatabasesWe've created an online guide featuring hundreds of free online databases from universities, to state resources, to open educational resources.
- GALILEOGALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.
- GRAFTCustom Google Search that searches over 4,600 university repositories at once. Most results are fully available online for free.
- JorumThe UK's largest repository for discovering and sharing Open Educational Resources for for higher and further education and the Skills sector. Currently contains over 16,000 resources.
- JSTORY Open and FreeExplore open access journals, ebooks, images, and research reports on the JSTOR and Artstor platforms.
- JurnCustom Google Search to search millions of free academic articles, chapters and theses from a variety of publishers.
- Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)Real-time federated search for OER content across multiple platforms.
- MERLOTMERLOT is curated collection of over 65,000 free and open online teaching resources from the California State University System.
- OAPENOAPEN is dedicated to open access, peer-reviewed books. We work with publishers to build a quality-controlled collection of open access books and provide services for publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of hosting, deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation.
- OASISOpenly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 115 different sources and contains 440,380 records.
- OER CommonsA massive collection of OERs divided by subject and grade levels. Includes over 40,500 college level resources.
- OER Knowledge CloudNot so much a collection as a massive OER search engine. All journal articles, reports, books and other items are fully searchable and either pulled from the source or link to it.
- Open Access ButtonThis search requires you to already have a citation, title, DOI, or URL before searching and scours the Internet looking for legal, open access versions of your requested article.
- Open Book PublishersWe are the leading independent Open Access publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the UK: we're not-for-profit, run by scholars, and committed to making high-quality research freely available to readers around the world.
- Open Education ConsortiumIncludes open textbooks in 24 subjects as well as open courses.
- Open MichiganFind open educational resources, courses, data, and publications from the University of Michigan.
- Phet Interactive SimulationsInteractive simulations in physics, chemistry, math, earth science, and biology from the University of Colorado Boulder.
- Pressbooks DirectoryOver 4,100 open and public domain books from across 140 Pressbooks networks. (Note: If you start a new search, make sure to double-check the license filter and remove "All Rights Reserved" from your search).
- Project Muuse Open Access ContentBrowse and search open access books and journals form academic publishers on the Project Muse platform.
- unpaywallNot a true database, but this Firefox and Chrome extension helps you find legally uploaded scientific articles from authors, publishers, and repositories themselves.
OPEN TEXTBOOKS
- American Institute of MathematicsA collection of open math textbooks approved by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) editorial board.
- Bay College OER Courses and TextbooksOpen educational textbooks from Bay College.
- BC Open Textbook CollectionFounded in 2012 with support of British Columbia Minister of Advanced Education, BCcampus currently has over 150 open access, college level textbooks.
- eLangdell BookstoreFree legal textbooks and casebooks from the Center for Computer-Assistant Legal Instruction.
- LibreTextsClick on "Explore the Libraries" to select your topic and browse through hundreds of open textbooks and texts.
- Milne Open TextbooksMilne Open Textbooks began as the project Open SUNY Textbooks: an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. This pilot initiative published high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.
- OASIS TexbooksA search of OER textbooks pulled from various sources.
- Open Culture Free TextbooksA growing list of 200 plus textbooks from knowledgeable scholars.
- OpenStaxFree, peer-reviewed and developed textbooks. OpenStax is an initiative of Rice University and is made possible through the generous support of several philanthropic foundations.
- Open Textbook LibraryHosted by the University of Minnesota, the Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
OPEN DISSERTATIONS
- EThOS: E-Theses Online Service (British Library)Coverage: 1800 to date. Also searchable as part of EBSCO's Open Dissertations database. More than 480,000 titles included with links to the full text for over 100,000 dissertations.
- Open Access Theses and DissertationsOATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 5,312,272 theses and dissertations.
- PQDTOpenWith ProQuest Dissertation Thesis (PQDT) Open, you can read the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge. Most items are from 2006 - current.
OPEN VIDEOS
For finding open access videos, the best starting places would be either YouTube or Vimeo:
- In YouTube, perform a search for your topic (use quotation marks to search as a phrase).
- After you search, click “Filters.” Under “Features,” select “Creative Commons.” This will limit the search to open access videos.
- In Vimeo, perform a search for your topic (use quotation marks to search as a phrase).
- After you receive your search results, you will have limiters on the left hand side of the screen.
- Click on “+ More filters” to expand the list of limiters.
- At the bottom should be “License.” There are 7 Creative Commons licenses listed. Unfortunately, Vimeo will make you search each license separately. You can to use any of the licenses if you’re just posting the video. If you are planning on making changes to the video, then it’s more important to pick the right CC license.
