Open Educational Resources Guide: Finding OER

Additional OER Materials

OERs go beyond textbooks. From activities to syllabi faculty around the nation are sharing their ideas. The items listed below are some of the main aggregators. There are also some specific Washington State resources!

Open Washington

The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges hosts the Open Washington website. Features:

Learn OER a self-paced OER training guide.
Find OER a categorized OER search guide including texbooks, videos, images, and other materials
Attribution Builder build your own attributions using CC licenses.
OER Stories a place where real faculty share their personal journey in using OE).

Find Open Educational Resources Online

MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Online Teaching and Learning
MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy.

Large, user generated databases of online materials are often a good place to start your search. These databases allow you to browse resources by subject as well as search for specific materials.

However, with the amount of materials uploaded to these sites it can be overwhelming. Pay attention to the filters you can use, specifically: format/resource type and level (example: lower division undergraduate).

OASIS
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 117 different sources and contains 388,707 records. OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
Mason OER Metafinder
Simultaneously search OER repositories with this metafinder created by George Mason University
OER Commons
Find Free-to-Use Teaching and Learning Content from around the World. Organize K-12 Lessons, College Courses, and more.
Open Culture
Open Culture's goal is to bring together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Dan Colman is the lead editor--he is the Director & Associate Dean of Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program.

OERs from Colleges and Universities

Texas A&M University OAK Search
Search through Texas A&M's catalog for open access materials. Includes excellent limits including peer reviewed articles, books, research datasets, and more.

Many colleges and universitites have developed repositories for open materials. The following are some of the biggest in the nation.

Open Course Library (Washington community and technical colleges)
Washington community and technical colleges’ Open Course Library offers collections of course materials that cost $30 or less for 81 highest enrolled courses. Offers powerpoints, assignments, lectures and more.
Wisc-Online
A collaborative effort from the 16 colleges in the Wisconsin Technical College System this resource provides 'learning objects' or small modules for basic concepts like "summarizing" in the humanities or the "anatomy of the heart" in life sciences. Has a robust browsing function.
openNCCC
openNCCC is a library of open educational resources that promotes exploration, creation, and collaboration with the goal of enriching teaching and learning in North Carolina and around the world.
Open Textbook Library (University of Minnesota)
Part of the Open Education Network, with content drawn from instutuations across the country. Stronger tools for browsing than for searching, but good preponderance of reviews for uploaded material.
Teach Anywhere (UW Bothell)
Teaching with and through digital tools can help strengthen and expand your teaching practice. It can also pose challenges and may be overwhelming at first. The resources on this page focus on helping you design digital course materials and teach in digital environments. UWB IT’s Digital Learning Team is also here to help you realize your instructional vision.