- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Research Guides
- Freely Available and Open Content
- Freely Available Teaching Resources
Freely Available and Open Content : Freely Available Teaching Resources
Tips and sources for finding and accessing high quality information resources to use in research and teaching whether or not you're associated with the UW-Madison.
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.
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.
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.
Open Licensing and Fair Use
- Creative Commons Licensing GuidanceUse Creative Commons tools to help share your work. Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give you permission to share and use your creative work— on conditions of your choice.
- Fair Use ChecklistThe Fair Use Checklist and variations on it have been widely used for many years to help educators, librarians, lawyers, and many other users of copyrighted works determine whether their activities are within the limits of fair use under U.S. copyright law. (Credit, Columbia University)
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.