Open Educational Resources (OER) are textbooks, interactive simulations and labs, instructional videos and other materials that are specifically designed for online use and completely free for instructors and students. These materials are peer reviewed, often created by prestigious institutions, and they allow instructors to move beyond the constraints imposed by traditional learning materials and experiment with new forms of teaching.
This Research Guide contains links to over 1,000 free resources for specialized, general education and K-12 courses, in text, video, interactive web simulation and many other formats. It also allows you to access free collections of images, historical literature and primary sources. Search the tabs above to get started!
OER is also connected to open pedagogy, an educational movement that seeks to motivate students by engaging them to publish information on the web. Do you know that instead of having students write a research paper you can organize them to write an OER textbook on the course subject as a group? This activity challenges them to practice their research skills, learn how to write for a public audience, professional editing, peer reviewing the work of classmates, understanding copyright, and will allow students to publish a work that they can cite on their CVs. There are also many other ways for students to publish their work, such as through creating wiki pages and blogs. Please check out our open pedagogy Canvas guide.
