Library Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Finding & Adopting OER

Find

While you can find open resources like textbooks, courses, multimedia and data using regular search engines (like Google), it is much easier to search dedicated OER repositories or libraries. The other tabs in this box will direct you to a sampling of such repositories and libraries. For more information, please check the OER Toolkit's Curating Module by The Learning Portal, or contact your Liaison Librarian.

The Learning Portal - Curating OER Resources
This module includes information to help find, evaluate, adapt and share open educational resources to meet learning outcomes and objectives. The module also offers information on how to describe and organize OER to enable its discovery by future users.
Library Services for Faculty - Faculty Library Team
A guide designed to welcome faculty to Mohawk College Library with a list of Librarian Liaisons for different schools of expertise.

Canadian Open Textbook Repositories

BCcampus: Open Textbook Collection
Lists open textbooks in a number of subject areas, many of which are included in Ontario’s own eCampus Open Textbook Library. It also includes a directory of other open textbook sites and a guide to using open textbooks.
eCampus Ontario: Open Library
A collection of over 1800 OER resources and over 7000 activities in H5P Studio.

Non-Canadian Open Textbook Repositories

Knowledge Unlatched Open Research Library
15,000 plus titles in various disciplines from open access provider Knowledge Unlatched.
Open Pressbooks Directory
Over 8,000 open ebooks created using Pressbooks from multiple organizations.
OpenStax Textbooks
Provides open textbooks that are peer-reviewed by educators, and can be reused and remixed to align with general course requirements.
The NOBA Project
Ready made textbooks that can be used as-is or customized to fit your needs. NOTE: Free account must be made to use or edit free textbooks, but articles within are freely browsable.

The collections of aggregated OER below are some of the larger known initiatives that are utilized by educators and library staff in Canada and elsewhere. Many of them have overlapping resources, as they curate and aggregate their content from the same content providers.

Merlot II
A curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed to and used by an international education community.
OER Commons
This international, extensive OER library aggregates a variety of OER across learning levels and subjects, and has an embedded authoring tool for remixing and localizing content.
OCAD University Inclusive Design Research Centre
An international community of open source developers, designers, researchers, educators and co-designers who work together to proactively ensure that emerging technology and practices are designed inclusively.

The collections listed below offer a range of multimedia resources for use and integration into teaching and learning.

University of British Columbia's Aggregated List of Image Sources
Offers a comprehensive list of image collections that are either in the Public Domain or Creative Commons licensed.
Creative Commons Image Search
Users can search across several repositories, including YouTube, Google, SoundCloud, and more, for CC licensed still images, music and videos.
Flickr: Creative Commons
Browse or search through Flickr's images under each type of CC licence.
Getty Institute Open Images
Searchable database of Creative Commons licensed images under Getty's Open Content Program.
TED Talks
TED's videos are all Creative Commons licensed, unless otherwise indicated.
Instructure Learning Object Repository
For the Canvas community, a repository of course content and modules. Login required but access is free.

Open data may include non-textual material such as map-based data, mathematical and scientific formulae, medical data, demographic data, financial data, and so forth. The collections listed below are all freely available to use, integrate, modify and manipulate to meet local needs.

Open Data Canada
Government of Canada's open data sets, covering demographic, financial, map data, and more.
EU Open Data Portal
A portal housing a variety of open data across EU policy domains, including the economy, employment, science, environment and education.
Data.gov
Comprises U.S. federal data with links to U.S. states, cities and counties with web sites that provide open data. Note that non-federal data available through Data.gov may have different licensing than open licensing.

Coursera
Coursera is an online education provider that offers online courses, popularly known as MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses, from top universities around the world. Currently, Coursera boasts an active catalog of more than 5400 online courses created by these partner institutions.
EdX
edX is an open online course (MOOC) provider that partners with leading universities and organizations to offer high-quality online courses to learners globally. The platform features over 3,500 courses that consist of video and text content, discussion forums, and various problem and assessment types. Most courses are free to access, with an optional paid verified certificate track that includes graded assignments and the opportunity to earn a certificate upon successful completion.
MIT OpenCourseWare 
MIT OpenCourseWare is a free and open collection of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum. MIT OpenCourseWare is an online publication of materials from over 2,500 MIT courses, freely sharing knowledge with learners and educators around the world.
OpenLearn 
OpenLearn is a free learning platform, delivered by The Open University. Whether it’s a 60-second animated video or a 24-hour course you are after, you will find it on OpenLearn for free.
OERu
OERu makes higher education accessible to everyone. Coordinated by the OER Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, the OERu network of institutions offers free online courses for students worldwide. The OERu partners also provide affordable ways for learners to gain academic credit towards qualifications from recognised institutions. OERu network includes recognised universities, polytechnics and community colleges from five continents.

Evaluate

The best OER evaluation rubrics include traditional evaluative criteria that address a resource's editorial quality. They also include criteria that address resource portability, and resource effectiveness in engaging learners. The other tabs in this box contain a sampling of rubrics to use in evaluating OER

Use or adapt this OER Evaluation Tool, which was originally created by Achieve, Inc. Achieve is a US-based education nonprofit, and a leader in the development of OER evaluation rubrics.

The tool has been tailored for the OCLS post-secondary context. It is comprised of eight rubrics for assessing OER - ranging from how well the resource is aligned to learning outcomes, to the degree to which the resource meets local accessibility standards.

You can download the tool in the following formats:

For open textbook reviews, you may wish to use the BC Open Textbook Review Criteria. This rubric contains criteria that much of the field uses in evaluating open textbooks. Specific criteria listed include the comprehensiveness of the textbook, the organization and flow, and the cultural relevance of the textbook content.

You can download the rubric in the following formats:

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requires that institutions provide all resources in an accessible format "on demand" There are no specific guidelines for what is accessible-- other than it must meet the need of the student requesting the accessible format. However, as educators, we have an ethical obligation to ensure that courses are fully accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities.

Unless carefully chosen with accessibility in mind, instructional resources can erect barriers that make learning difficult or impossible. Use the Accessibility Checklist, which has been aligned to accessibility standards. The Checklist will help to ensure that the resources you curate are accessible to all learners.

You can download the checklist in the following formats:

Adopt and Attribute

The license attached to the work will let you know your rights as a user of that work. Part of Creative Commons licensing terms is "Attribution" - providing credit to the creator (CC BY). Read more about CC licenses. If you redistribute or modify material (as opposed to just linking to it), you must provide attribution.

How to Provide Attribution

When providing attribution to a work you are adopting or adapting, include the following:

Title of the work
Author of the work and a link to the author profile page if there is one
Source of the work with a link to the source if possible
License with a link to the license. See a list of CC licenses.

Examples of Attribution

Photo

Attribution: "Green Tree Frog Litoria caerulea" by Stephen Michael Barnett is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

eBook

Attribution: Advanced Research Skills: Conducting Literature and Systematic Reviews by Kelly Dermody, Cecile Farnum, Daniel Jakubek, Jo-Anne Petropoulos, Jane Schmidt, and Reece Steinberg is licensed under CC BY (Attribution).

Guide to Adopting OERs

Faculty OER Toolkit
This guide to adapting and adopting Open Educational Resources includes definitions and examples, information about Creative Commons licensing, and tips on how to adapt and/or adopt OER for classroom use.