CTE - Center for Teaching Excellence: Finding OER
Finding OER: Determining Suitability and Reliability
When determining whether or not to use an open textbook (or other OER component), faculty members should follow the same evaluation process as they use for commercially-published textbooks and course components.
Open textbooks, courses, and components do sometimes present additional challenges, since some of them do not list the author(s) and/or publication year. However, if you are teaching in a discipline where the publication date of the material is less important than the content itself and how it is presented (e.g. algebra, history, writing), then you will find many potential open textbooks and other resources.
Another aspect of OER materials to keep in mind is licensing. This is especially important if you want to modify the materials that you find. For more details on licensing, see OER and Licenses.
Finding Open Textbooks
Textbooks listed in these repositories are available in digital form for free, with no access restrictions.
- Open Educational Resource 2017 Textbook ListThis is a 42 page PDF document containing a list of open textbooks, grouped by subject, including links. It was compiled by librarians Zachariah Claybaugh and Chelsea Stone, from Sacred Heart University. Made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
- Open Textbook LibraryHosted by the University of Minnesota, the books at the Open Textbook Library cover a wide range of subjects and include faculty reviews. "All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization."
- BCcampusA repository of open textbooks, covering a variety of subjects, peer reviewed and adapted by faculty in British Columbia, Canada. Some books have reviews.
- Open SUNY TextbooksWritten and reviewed by faculty, textbooks at the Open SUNY Textbooks repository cover both general and specific areas in many different subjects.
- Saylor Academy Open Textbooks"The great majority of our textbooks are not published by Saylor Academy -- we host and distribute texts that have been authored and published by others." A number of the textbooks available here are digital versions of the older editions of commercially-published textbooks.
- OAPEN Online Library and Publication Platform"OAPEN promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication. 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." Browse by subject or search by keyword. Includes books in foreign languages.
Finding Open Courses and Components
In addition to Open Textbooks, many items of Open Courseware are also being developed and shared. These can include lesson plans, activities, worksheets, and videos; but entire courses are sometimes available for reuse and adaptation.
- Open Course LibraryOpen Course Library is managed by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. It is "a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts. Some of our materials (also called open educational resources, or OER) are paired with low cost textbooks ($30 or less). Many of the courses can be taught at no cost to students. Unless otherwise noted, all materials are shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.OCL courses and materials have undergone testing for accessibility and have been designed using the industry-standard Quality Matters (QM) rubric for assessing the quality of online courses." Materials were developed for highest-enrolled courses, and subjects covered include general sciences, humanities, and social sciences.
- MIT OpenCourseWare"MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity." Available course content includes syllabi, reading lists, assignment/project guidelines, video lectures, and lecture notes. Content is available for courses in a wide array of subjects including business, humanities, and sciences.
- The Orange Grove: Florida's Open Educational Resource RepositoryThe Orange Grove repository is Florida's digital repository for instructional resources. It is organized into 4 broad categories: Open Collections (includes Open Courseware, Open Textbooks, 3d object models, learning modules, and videos), Higher Education Resources, K-12 Resources, and Institution Collections (owned and managed by Florida higher educational institutions).
Finding OER--Search Engines
There are several major repositories of OER that contain mixtures of the different types of items available--textbooks, videos, reading lists, activities/worksheets, etc. If you are looking for an overview of what is available in a subject area, as opposed to looking specifically for a textbook or full course, then you should try searching these sites.
- MERLOT CollectionOne of the most well-known OER repositories, "The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers." MERLOT has multiple searching and filtering options, and some of the material includes reviews.
- OER CommonsAnother meta-search is available from OER Commons. "From a single point of access in OER Commons, you can search, browse, and evaluate resources in OER Commons' growing collection of over 50,000 high-quality OER." This search engine also has multiple ways to filter and narrow down your results.