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Welcome to the Library Guide for Open Educational Resources.
Use the menu to navigate through this guide.
"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." [1]
The Open Education movement is built around the 5Rs of Openness: [2]
OER are educational materials that are specifically designed by their creator/s to be openly available, and are often licensed to be re-used, re-mixed, and re-distributed. Open is not just about low cost (though that is an important benefit of using OER) but about the ability to take what others have created, customize it for your specific educational needs, and then share your creation with others.
OER come in a variety of forms:
Why OER?
The open resource movement has been around for a while, starting with static learning objects (about 2000), and transitioning to OER that allowed for revision and reuse. It is the ever-increasing cost of textbooks and materials for students that is now pushing the OER movement forward. Textbooks and learning materials cost students approximately $1,200 per year. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 in 10 students didn't purchase a textbook because it was too expensive. Through OER the cost of student materials can be drastically reduced. OER also gives instructors the ability to customize the materials, creating the "perfect" textbook instead of being bound to traditional print resources.
How To Get Started
The first step is finding OER, and that is what this guide is designed to do, so check out
Watch a previously recorded webinar for "Research Beyond the NU Library: Open Access Resources, Open Educational Resources and Alternative Search Tools" with NU Librarians Taylor Duncan and Marisha Kelly. Access the presentation slides and review related resources.
What is OER and why does it matter? Learn about Open Educational Resources and why they are important to the future of higher education.
This page has been adapted from University of West Florida University Libraries Open Educational Resources.