Learn how to identify, find and use Open Educational Resources for yourself or your students.

2. “Open Educational Resources are teaching,
learning, and research resources released
under an open license that permits their
free use and repurposing by
others. OERs can be full courses, course
materials, lesson plans, open textbooks,
learning objects, videos, games, tests,
software, or any other tool, material, or
technique that supports access to
knowledge.“
What are Open Educational Resources
(OERs)?
Source: SPARC: The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition http://sparc.arl.org/issues/oer

3. “Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a new model for
disseminating knowledge that is designed to take full
advantage of the digital environment.
Students can access OER online for zero cost, download and
keep a copy, and print as many pages as they wish.
Teachers can collect and tailor OER to perfectly suit their
curriculum, and share their innovations with other educators.
Entrepreneurs can build businesses around OER by offering
products that add value, such as assessments, software or
enhanced formats.
Authors can disseminate their work to a worldwide audience while
still receiving attribution.
OER can maximize the full benefit of the Internet to improve
teaching, learning and access to education.”
A NEW EDUCATION MODEL FOR THE DIGITAL WORLD
http://sparc.arl.org/issues/oer

4. • Reuse: Content can be reused in its unaltered
form.
• Revise: Content can be adapted, modified or
altered.
• Remix: New content can be added to the original or
revised content to create something new.
• Redistribute: Copies of the content can be
shared with others in its original, revised or remixed form.
The “4 Rs”of Open Ed Resources
http://sparc.arl.org/issues/oer

5. OERS CAN INCLUDE:
 Full courses (free but no college credit given).
 Open textbooks which can be added to, rearranged, or
otherwise adapted to a particular course
 E-books
 Lesson plans
 Videos
 Music
 Course materials
 Games
 Tests
 Software
 Anything that supports learning

6. LEVELS OF CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES
Public Domain Declaration (CC0): By using CC0, you waive
all copyright and related rights to a work to the extent possible
under the law.
Attribution (BY): This license lets others distribute, remix,
tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as
they credit you for the original creation.
Share Alike (SA): You can distribute derivative works only
under a license identical to the license that governs the work.
No Derivative Works (ND): You can copy, distribute, display
and perform only verbatim copies of this work, not derivative
works based upon it.
Noncommercial (NC): You can copy, distribute, display and
perform this work, but for noncommercial purposes only
See examples of works under various CC licenses:
http://creativecommons.org/examples
License definitions from www.creativecommons.org

7. OPEN COURSES: UNIVERSITIES
Examples:
“MIT Open CourseWare (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.” http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
“Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of
introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at
Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational
materials for all who wish to learn.” http://oyc.yale.edu/
Webcast.berkeley: University of California--Berkeley’s central service
for online video and audio for students and learners around the globe.”
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/
Open Learn from the UK’s Open University: Over 650 free courses,
described as “excerpts” of the full courses taken by registered (tuition-
paying) students.
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/

8. RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS
Examples:
Open Course Library: “A collection of high quality, free-to-use courses that
you can download and use for teaching. All content is stored in Google docs
making it easy to access, browse and download.” Managed by the
Washington State Board of Community & Technical
Colleges. http://opencourselibrary.org/
MERLOT II: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning & Online
Teaching:
“MERLOT is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and
learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by
an international education community.”
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
Connexions: “an educational content repository and a content management
system optimized for the delivery of educational content…for all ages. A
place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge
chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.
Anyone may view or contribute.” http://cnx.org/
OER Commons: Huge collection of OERs of all types for both K-12 and

9. K-12 RESOURCES
Curriki: “a nonprofit K-12 global community for teachers, students, and parents
to create, share, and find free learning resources that enable true personalized
learning. ”http://www.curriki.org/welcome/
CK-12 Foundation “is a non-profit that creates and aggregates high quality,
curated STEM content”. http://www.ck12.org/about/
PBS Learning Media: “thousands of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted
digital resources...aligned to Common Core and national standards. Basic
service is free for PreK-12 educators.” http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/
Gooru Learning: “a free search engine for learning that makes it easy for
teachers to discover educational content, organize it into learning playlists, and
teach and share it with students to study.”
http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover
Saylor K-12 (beta): “Free, Common Core-aligned courses for students, parents,
and teachers in math, English language arts, and SAT prep. Saylor also offers
college-level and professional development courses. http://www.saylor.org/
Khan Academy: Primary, secondary and post-secondary content in math,
science, economics, and some humanities. https://www.khanacademy.org/library

10. OPEN TEXTBOOKS
OpenStax College: An initiative of Rice University providing free online
textbooks developed and peer-reviewed by educators.
http://openstaxcollege.org/
University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library:
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources:
http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/
The Global Text Project “publishes electronic texts for students in the
developing world, and maintains a database of links to books for such
students.” A joint project of the University of Georgia and the University
of Denver. http://globaltext.terry.uga.edu/books

11. CC LICENSED IMAGES, VIDEOS & MUSIC
Flickr Advanced Search: Be sure to scroll down to the bottom and click “Only
search with Creative Commons licensed content.”
http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced
Fotopedia: Click “advanced options” in the upper right, and select the level of
license you need under “license”. http://www.fotopedia.com/search/photos
Open Clip Art Library: http://openclipart.org/
Vimeo: Includes Creative Commons licensed videos.
http://vimeo.com/creativecommons
Internet Archive: freely available videos including news footage, movies,
cartoons, and more. https://archive.org/details/movies
Jamendo: offers more than 350,000 free music tracks licensed under Creative
Commons, all available for streaming and unlimited download without ads
http://www.jamendo.com/en/
Find More at http://open4us.org/find-oer/
Note: Google Advanced Search has an option to limit your search by license, but be
aware that the license may pertain only to the text, while the image(s) on a page may be
under copyright.

12. BOOKS & ARTICLES
Directory of Open Access Journals: Free access to articles from scientific
and scholarly periodicals on a wide range of topics, in several languages.
Directory of Open Access Books: Freely accessible and downloadable
academic books.
Wiley Open Access: A small collection of open access journals from Wiley
Online Library.
Public Library of Science (PLOS): Open access scientific and medical
research journals.

13. WHAT COULD YOU DO WITH OERS?
“Create” by Wes Peck is licensed under CC BY ND