Research Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Find OER

If you'd like to use OER in your course, you have several options: adopt, adapt, or create materials.

Adopt

"lego brick" by Nikita Kozin, The Noun Project is licensed under CC BY 3.0

If high-quality, vetted materials exist for the topic your course addresses, you may choose to adopt existing OER materials "as-is." This is the simplest and least time-intensive way of incorporating OER into a class.

Adapt

"lego brick (2)" by Nikita Kozin, The Noun Project is licensed under CC BY 3.0

If OER are available for the topic of your course but they aren't exactly what you want (e.g., the information is dated, the coverage is too broad, etc.), you may want to adapt the materials if they have a Creative Commons license that allows for adaptation. In those cases, you can edit them to make them better fit your course.

Similarly, if OER are available but no single resource is adequate for your needs, you may choose to build an OER by pulling together pieces from several OER and other free-to-use content in the model of a "course pack." This is a flexible option but does require a greater time investment that simply adopting pre-existing materials.

Create

"lego" by Icogenix, The Noun Project is licensed under CC BY 3.0

If there aren't OER that will work for your course, you may want to create your own. This could be simple -- like openly licensing materials you have already created for your course (like slide decks, syllabi, lesson plans, etc.) -- or more complex, like creating your own OER textbook. In general, OER creation is the most time-consuming of the three options.

Sources for OER

Whether you choose to adopt, adapt, or create materials, the first step is searching for existing resources in your discipline to understand what already exists. The following repositories and websites have databases of OER.

NOTE: It's important to search multiple repositories and websites when looking for OER; due to the distributed nature of OER creation, no single website or repository will have everything that might exist for your subject area.

The star icon indicates a resource that searches multiple websites at once and can make for more efficient searching.

LibreTexts
LibreTexts is an open textbook authoring platform and their index includes several thousand OER created by instructors across the country.
OASIS
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) was developed by SUNY Geneseo and searches 115 different sources that house OER.
OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of OER. You can search by keywords and even limit your results to higher education to make your search more relevant.
OpenEd Textbooks
The University of British Columbia's collection includes several hundred titles in fields from art, computer science, earth sciences, statistics, and more.
OpenStax
Sponsored by Rice University, OpenStax has resources in many fields and includes both English and Spanish texts.
Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library from the Open Education Network currently has over 1300 titles in subjects like business, education, mathematics, natural sciences, law, and more.
Pressbooks Directory
Pressbooks is a publishing platform designed for educators, and their directory includes over 6,000 texts in dozens of fields.

Curated Lists

Several state OER advocacy groups have created lists of OER suitable for higher ed institutions in their state. Although the number of resources will vary based on which list you use and which discipline you're searching, it's a good way to see OER that have been vetted for different courses elsewhere in the country.