- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Research Guides
- Open Educational Resources
- Adopt, Adapt, Create and Finding OER Resources
Open Educational Resources : Adopt, Adapt, Create and Finding OER Resources
Free online resources for students, teachers, and lifelong learners
Ask a Librarian at MERIT
If chat is offline, click here to Ask a Librarian via UW-Madison Libraries general library help chat.
General Resources
- OpenStax CNXOpenStax CNX contains educational materials for everyone - from children to college students to professionals - organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons attribution license.
- InTechA multidisciplinary Open Access publisher of books and journals covering the fields of Physical Sciences, Engineering, Technology, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, Business, Social Sciences, and the Humanities. InTech has published more than 850 Open Access books, and provides support services for faculty who wish to publish a book or journal and make it available via Open Access.
- nanoHubProvides over 1600 open teaching and learning resources: online presentations; course material; learning modules; podcasts; simulation tools. Created by the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology.
- The Open Education ConsortiumFree and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. A collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a board and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.
- WikiEducatorAn evolving online community intended for the planning of education projects and the development of free content on WikiEducator for free learning.
- Open CultureAvailable via YouTube, iTunes or the web, these courses were taped on the campuses of top universities like Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Harvard and UC Berkeley. They range across diverse disciplines – Philosophy, History, Computer Science, and Physics, to name a few — and you can access them all for free.
- Online UniversityOnline University features an expertly curated database of free online college courses from the top universities from around the world taught in English as well as the many other languages. The list of schools includes countries from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and North America. You will be able to search the entire database by countries, subject matter and specific languages.
- Open LearningCreated by the Open University, Open Learning is a repository of free courses and materials across a wide subject base.
- MIT OpenCourseWareThis is where you can find materials used in the teaching at MIT's subjects on the web.
- MERLOT IIA curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
- Blended Learning ToolKitThis Blended Learning Toolkit is a free, open resource for educational institutions interested in developing or expanding their blended learning initiatives.
Adopt. Adapt, Create, and Find OER Materials Overview
This section will help you find resources in order to find OER Resources, Adapt or Adopt them, or Create them from scratch. You'll also find links to where you can get Open Textbooks, Open Courses, and Open Lesson plans.
Finding OER Materials
- Finding OER InforgraphicThe Center for Open Education Resources and Language Learning created an infographic that shows how to search for OER materials to use in your classroom.
- Saylor Course Research GuidesSaylor offers and excellent set of OER guides by subject/class created for instructors building open courses.
- Open Textbook ProjectThis explains what an open textbook is and the five R's of open education defined by David Wiley.
- Do-It-Yourself GuideA guide with quick tips for adopting OERs by Affordable Learning Georgia.
- Tutorial 1: Finding Free and Open ResourcesAffordable Learning Georgia put together a guide to help you find OER materials.
- MIT Open Course WareMIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects available on the Web, free of charge.
Adopting or Adapting OER Materials
- Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to KnowA five-step guide from the Rebus Community for authors and those who support them who want to modify an existing open textbook.
- Tutorial 2: Creating and Modifying OERsAffordable Learning Georgia's guide to creating and modifying OERs.
Create OER Materials
- Tutorial 2: Creating and Modifying OERsAffordable Learning Georgia's guide to creating and modifying OERs.
- Academic PubAcademicPub is a build-your-own-textbook service that offers students three different options for purchasing the book: digital download, paperback, or hardcover. Free registration is required. Instructors can create a customized textbook with book chapters, case studies and journal articles. AcademicPub provides services to track how much royalties will cost for each custom textbook.
- PressbooksA platform for online publishing that you can use to create a textbook that is downloadable in multiple formats. Offers a range of free and subscription options.
- Open AuthorOER Commons create Open Author as tool to help you create openly licensed education materials.
- H5PCreate free, open source interactive activities for students using HTML5. Check out demos of the different activities and the tutorials that will help you create them.
Lesson Plans
- OER CommonsOpen Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. Open Educational Resources are different from other resources a teacher may use in that OER have been given limited or unrestricted licensing rights.
- Share My LessonShare My Lesson is a place where educators can come together to create and share their very best teaching resources. Developed by teachers for teachers, this free platform gives access to high-quality teaching resources and provides an online community where teachers can collaborate with, encourage and inspire each other.
- Free Education SlidesCheck out this mass collection of shared slides from presentations on education all over the world.
- Open KSADigital course material made freely available by the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University.
- Open Learning InitiativeOpen Learning Initiative is a face-to-face class, online, or hybrid. Evidence-based learning science.
Improved student outcomes from nonprofit higher education at Carnegie Mellon University - Lumen LearningLumen Learning is to enable unprecedented learning for all students. Do this by providing affordable course materials designed to strengthen learning using open educational resources (OER).
- Open Course LibraryA 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.
OER Videos
This video shows you how to efficiently search in repositories of Open Educational Resources.
David Wiley shows you how to efficiently use Google to search for Open Educational Resources.
Elizabeth Mays shows you how to use Pressbooks to create a book. This is gives you a good look at the Pressbooks platform and an idea for what you could do with it when creating an open textbook. Pressbooks also allows you to embed H5P interactive activities into your book.
Open Textbooks
- BCcampus OpenEd ResourcesBCcampus OpenEd offers their collection of Open Textbooks that you can adopt or adapt for your classroom.
- Community College Consortium for Open Educational ResourcesThe CCCOER collects open access resources for the creation of textbook alternatives, in addition to open content repositories and developmental tools. Access to over 500 open texbooks, as well as a useful guide to creating and implementing your own open access textbook.
- Flat World KnowledgeProvides a new approach to college textbooks offering rigorously reviewed textbooks online free of cost to students. Offers full-text online for free and in a variety of affordable formats.
- OER CommonsIn addition to lesson plans and teaching materials, OER Commons also offers hundreds of college-level open textbooks from higher education institutions around the world.
- smART HistoryA free and open, online, not-for-profit art history textbook with complete multimedia content.
- Textbook MediaOffers a number of e-Textbooks sorted by author and topic. All of the textbooks can be downloaded for free and many of them can be purchased in print form.
- The California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP)The California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP) began in 2001 as a collaborative - a public/private undertaking; it was the first organization created to address the high cost, content range, and consistent shortages of K-12 textbooks in California. The latter goal is currently well on its way to being accomplished. COSTP has evolved over recent years to establish and spread the Open Textbook, Open Educational Resource (OER), Open Courseware, and Open Education memes to K-12 and postsecondary educational institutions, worldwide.
- Open Textbook LibraryThe Open Textbook Network project comes from the University of Minnesota. It offers open textbooks that are licensed for teachers and students to use freely, adapt, and distribute.
- Open StaxRice University created the non-profit OpenStax to create a platform where high-quality open textbooks could be developed, peer-reviewed by educators, create, and disseminated freely on the web.
- OpenSuny TextbooksAll of the Open Textbooks available from OpenSuny.