Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: Finding Open Resources

Top OER Sources

There are many ways to find OER materials to use in your courses. Below are three of the top sites to search for OER materials.

Open Textbook Library
Maintained at the University of Minnesota, the Open Textbook Library curates a collection of OER from numerous academic and professional publishers, across many disciplines and course levels.
OpenStax
Hosted at Rice University, OpenStax is one of the best-known publishers of OER textbooks. Primarily covering large 100- or 200-level courses, such as the calculus sequence, US history, Psych 1, etc.
MIT Open Courseware
Many courses at MIT have made some or all of their content available for free as open courseware. Most do not include a textbook, but do have notes, recorded lectures, assignments, etc.

Here are a few samples of the types of material available on these sites:

American Environmental History (Allosso)
"For too long the environment has been considered little more than a neutral background to history. This text surveys findings of the new field of Environmental History about how the environment of the Americas influenced the actions of people here and how people affected their environments, from prehistory to the present."
Psychology 2e (Spielman, Jenkins, & Lovett)
"Psychology 2e is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe."
Engineering Dynamics (Vandiver & Gossard)
"This course is an introduction to the dynamics and vibrations of lumped-parameter models of mechanical systems. Topics covered include kinematics, force-momentum formulation for systems of particles and rigid bodies in planar motion, work-energy concepts, virtual displacements and virtual work." Includes video lectures, notes, worked exams, solved problem sets, and discussion videos.

Finding Further Resources

While Open Textbook Library, OpenStax, and MIT Open Courseware are popular first-stops for finding OERs, they are not the only ones. Just like traditional book and educational material publishing, there is a lot to choose from. For more information, you might check the following directories, or ask a librarian for assistance.

MERLOT
Search for curated online learning and support materials. Includes animations, case studies, courses and course modules, quizzes, reference material, tutorials, and more. Technical formats include audios, documents, images, videos, and more.
OASIS
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search, a search engine for finding open content material. Currently searches content from 97 different sources.
University of Maryland Libary OER
The University of Maryland Libraries maintains a list of OER creators by broad discipline (humanities, engineering, social sciences, etc)
University of Missouri OER
The library at the University of Missouri maintains a large library of links to OER, arranged by type of material (textbooks, courseware, etc).

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Top OER Sources

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