Open Educational Resources (OER): Search OER

Instructors can find OER in a variety of resources. Most OER organizations or collaborations have a database or central list of resources that faculty have added. Some databases also feature annotations or faculty feedback. Additionally, many disciplines have their own OER websites. The list below is not comprehensive but can instead be used as a starting point for faculty doing interdisciplinary work or work in any discipline. Remember that not all of the learning materials in these repositories and sources are OER for modifying but most of the content is freely available under Fair Use and/or with attribution.

Weblinks

• OER Commons  - https://www.oercommons.org/

Recorded Lectures & Video Tutorials Search

• MIT YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/MIT
• Khan Academy - https://www.khanacademy.org/

Open Textbooks

• College Open Textbooks - https://coteducation.com/continuing-our-support-for-open-textbooks/
• OpenStax College - https://openstax.org/
• Open SUNY Textbooks - https://textbooks.opensuny.org/
• Open Textbook Library - https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/

Modular Course Components

• Open Course Library - http://opencourselibrary.org/
• Open Michigan - https://open.umich.edu/

Complete Courses

• edX - https://www.edx.org/
• MIT Open Courseware - https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/ocw-scholar/
• Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University - http://oli.cmu.edu/
• Open Yale Course - https://oyc.yale.edu/
• UK Open University Learning Space - https://www.open.edu/openlearn/

OER and OCW Search Engines

• Open Education Consortium Search - https://www.oeconsortium.org/courses/
• Semantic Course Search (Serendipity) - http://serendipity.utpl.edu.ec/
• Creative Commons Search - http://search.creativecommons.org/

Open Pedagogy Resources

• General OER Repositories
• Open Pedagogy Resources

Search OER 

Tips for Searching OER:

1. Use the advanced searching feature if there is one. This will save you some time and limit your search.
2. Start with broad terms (ex. disease instead of cancer) and then narrow.
3. As you narrow, think about disciplinary language. Is there something else this topic might be referred to as?
4. If you still aren't getting good results, try to start with the browsing feature (even if it's very broad). Sometimes the term your searching isn't used but you still know it would be under a broad subject like "humanities" or "writing".

Also, see below for an infographic which visualizes the process of searching for OER.
*Note: this infographic was adapted and modified from the University of Texas at Austin's original infographic. For more information, see their Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning website.

• Authoring accessible OER
• 80 Open Education Resource (OER) tools for publishing and development initiatives.
• Open resources/MERLOT: Customizing and authoring content
• Creating Open Educational Resources
• A 7-step guide to creating your own Open Educational Resources
• Creating OER the WHO and the HOW
• OERPUB
• Open educational resources
• Create - OER Commons
• LibreOffice
• S5
• Google Drive
• Course Builder