Open Educational Resources

Free Education through OER

What is OER?

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are high-quality, openly licensed, online

educational materials that offer an extraordinary opportunity for people

everywhere to share, use, and reuse knowledge.”

-William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

• Digital, free to use, and available under Creative Commons licenses

• Encompasses everything from assignments and learning objects to whole

classes and textbooks

Why Use OER?

• Textbooks are expensive, OER is free

• OER can come in different formats for multi-modal learning

• Saves the time it would take to create something from scratch

How to find OER

• Many sites are dedicated to providing OER content for instructors

• Merlot: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

• SkillsCommons: https://www.skillscommons.org/

• OPEN: https://open4us.org/

• Boundless: https://www.boundless.com/

• MCO Digital Study: http://study.ncmco.us

• And many more…

• A search portal is available through search.creativecommons.org to make

finding Creative Commons licensed material to create OER easy

Drawbacks to OER

• Content scattered on various repositories

• Must be vetted for appropriateness, quality, and accessibility

• Student access to technology could be limited

• Cultural barriers could exist between the content creator and the student

• Content online is prone to changing or disappearing completely

Why Should Instructors Create OER?

“He who receives ideas from me receives

instruction without lessening mine; as he who lights

his taper at mine receives light without darkening

me.”

-Thomas Jefferson

Sources

• OER Logo is licensed CC0

• Thomas Jefferson Image is licensed CC0