Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely accessible online teaching and learning materials. They can be videos, textbooks, quizzes, learning modules and more. Using OER in your classroom will improve student engagement and success, provide immediate, equitable access to resources, save money for your students, and provide you a venue to use flexible, high-quality learning materials in your individualized curriculum. This guide collects the best-of-the-best OER and organizes them by college and department. Take a look and see what is available in your discipline.
- Open Textbook is a term used to indicate a Textbook that is fully OER.
- Public Resources are materials that are free, but licenses still protect the content in some way.
- Library Resources do not cost your students any money, and should also be considered as a means to lower the total cost of learning for your students.
- Affordable Learning Materials: course materials that cost students $50or less, in total.
Tips for finding and using OER and other affordable content:
- There are lots of OER materials out there. It takes time and persistence to find the ones that best fit your students' academic and research needs.
- Instead of focusing on the textbook that you want to replace, focus on what you want your students to know or do.
- Use the resources in this guide to find OER relevant to your discipline and courses. These links are great starting points but if you are not finding the OER that work for you, contact your librarian for personalized help.
- If you find an article in a library database that you want to use in a course, Library staff can help you with copyright considerations and provide access to the resource through reserves, embed in an online course, or on a website.
- Talk with your librarian with any questions you have about finding and using OER.
Links to more detailed information about OER and copyright: