Open Educational Resources & Library Materials: Home

What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Open Educational Resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. Open Educational Resources include:

• Learning Content: courses, lectures, audio/visual resources, textbook & book collections, and openly accessible journals.
• Tools & Systems: software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and online learning communities.
• Copyright & Licensing Resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content. Information about how open content and collections can be used for educational purposes.

Why OER?

OER is a relatively new movement in education; educators and learners as well as learning institutions are driving its development. OER provides an alternative to the rising costs of education. OER provides an opportunity to try new ways of teaching and learning, many of which are more collaborative and participatory. Some educators are using OER as a way to get students more involved, using the OER process as a way to collaborate with  them on content creation. This process brings students into a larger context of learning and sharing knowledge beyond the four walls of their classroom. Flexibility is a key concept in OER. Materials can be adapted for your specific needs. Because these materials can be searched by a wide variety of criteria, you can quickly find what you specifically need.

The library is interested in finding ways of helping assist faculty in exploring open access materials and other resources that may help offset the need for textbooks in courses – we can answer questions on finding materials in the library collection or on the web.

    Pamela Contakos     413-662-5542