Why Use Open Educational Resources?
- Reduces financial burden on students
- Adaptable to fit your course's needs
- Published by professors, designed to support all types of learning
- Encourages student engagement with materials with a variety of supplementary materials
- Improves student opinions of the course itself and you as a professor
- Supports the mission and core values of SEU through equitable practice and academic innovation
Locating OER's
Many of these links will have overlapping content, as OER authors may post their works to different groups or publisher lists. OASIS and Mason OER Metafinder are best if you are looking for supplementary course materials as well as textbooks, as they also search for materials in the public domain and materials intended for use outside of academia.
If you do choose to use an OER for your course, please email us at mahoneylibrary@steu.edu so we can add it to our lists for students!
OASIS
Searches open content from 132 different sources and contains almost 450,000 records
for textbooks, courses, course materials, videos, simulations, open access books,
and more
OER Commons
Contains both K-12 resources and university-level materials. They also have curated
collections on different subject areas and groups.
OpenStax
A large and well-known publisher of OER's, OpenStax has a small collection, but all
materials are peer reviewed and high quality
BC Open Collection
This collection is designed for higher education institutions in British Columbia,
Canada, but is still relevant for use at SEU. Contains hundreds of textbooks and course
materials on a variety of subjects
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
Searches across 22 OER repositories (including many on this list) for textbooks, courses,
images, videos, and more. Searches take longer but update with new results.
Open Textbook Library
Contains only original textbooks in use at multiple higher ed institutions, or directly
affiliated with a higher ed institution, professional organization, or scholarly society.
Pressbooks Directory
Functions as both a publisher and repository. Contains over 8,000 textbooks from 200
organizations. Supports a wide variety of embedded activities and is highly accessible
MILNE Open Textbooks
A fairly small collection, all written by SUNY faculty
Criteria for Evaluating OER's
- Based on your knowledge and external sources, is the information accurate?
- Is there obvious bias?
- Is content up-to-date?
- Does the OER meet web accessibility standards?
- Do audio-visual materials have captions and alt-text descriptions?
- Are students able to quickly and easily access the materials?
- Is it available in multiple modalities (download, read online, printing)?
- What are the author's credentials?
- What institution(s) are they associated with?
- Has it been peer reviewed, and by whom?
- Is the OER easy to navigate?
- Are included images high-resolution and good quality?
- Are there any obvious typographical or grammatical errors?
- Is the content consistent in its language, style, and key terms?
- Does it provide complete coverage of the topic at the level of the course you are teaching?
- Are topics organized in a clear, structured, and logical order?
- Does it provide clear learning objectives for students?
- Is the information and teaching style appropriate for the level of course you are teaching?
- Does the OER contain supplementary materials (videos, simulations, diagrams, links, etc.)?
- Are there opportunities for students to check their understanding of the material?
- Was it published under a license that allows you to adapt and build upon the material?
- Is the resource divided into sections or modules that can be easily taken apart and adapted for your use?
Relevant Research
Clinton-Lisell, V., & Kelly, A. (2024). The Role of Open Education and Faculty Gender in Shaping Student Perceptions. Open Praxis, 16(4), 567–582. https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.16.4.733
Clinton-Lisell, V. & Kelly, A. E. (2024). The cost of doing homework: Online homework systems with access codes from a social justice perspective. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science (IJTES), 8(2), 296-310. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijtes.547
Oelfke, A. L., Sadowski, J. A., Cari, M. R., Iremonger, C., Volkert, K., Dykman, E., . . . Baumann, A. (2021). Using open educational resources at Viterbo University: Faculty and student feedback. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 22(1), 78-90. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v22i1.4970
Samson, R.L., Clinton-Lisell, V., & Fischer, L. (2021). Let students choose: Examining the impact of Open Educational Resources on performance in general chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 98(3), 745-755. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00595
Short, C. R., Hilton, B., Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Chaffee, R., Guilmett, J., & Darrow, J. (2024). Higher education instructors’ perceptions of open pedagogy: an exploratory study of open pedagogy definitions in practice. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2024.2334237