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Open Educational Resources: Guide

What is OER?

With the rising cost of textbooks, students' ability to access their required learning materials can often be a barrier to fully participating in their courses and succeeding in their studies. At the same time, the rapid change in technology continues to impact how we engage with information. Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that provide everyone with free and perpetual permission to access, use, and modify the resource.

This guide provides a list of resources and repositories for finding high-quality academic OER that instructors can use in their teaching.

5R Activities of OER

OER provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities:

  • Retain – make, own, and control a copy of the resource
  • Reuse – use your copy of the resource publicly
  • Revise – edit, adapt, and modify your copy
  • Remix – combine the original or revised copy with other existing material to create something new
  • Redistribute – share copies of the original, revised, or remixed copy with others

Source: Creative Commons

Open Textbooks

The following list of resources includes collections of Open Textbooks. These textbooks are free to access and use, but be sure to check licensing permissions if you want to modify or make changes to any materials.

Open Access Books

The following list of resources includes collections of Open Access academic books. These books are free to access and use, but be sure to check licensing permissions if you want to modify or make changes to any materials.

OER Repositories

The following list of repositories includes a variety of OER, including books, assignments, lectures, and courses. The content is free to access and use, but be sure to check licensing permissions if you want to modify or make changes to any materials.