Library Research Guides: Biology Resources: Open Educational Resources (OER)

What are OER?

"Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation." - UNESCO

As the definition above illustrates, OER are not limited to only open textbooks; however, textbook affordability is a central issue for many OER initiatives.

If you'd like to learn more about OER and textbook affordability, visit the Open Educational Resources and Affordable Textbooks guide.

Finding OER

The Milne Library at SUNY Geneseo developed OASIS, a tool that searches across multiple OER sites.

George Mason University Libraries also created a tool that searches across OER sites, the Mason OER Metafinder (MOM).

Try searching with OASIS or MOM before making a deeper dive into the OER sites in the next section. Your library liaison is also here to help.

OER Sites

Numerous sites and repositories exist that make OER available online or make finding OER easier. Below is a selection of available sites.

Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL)
The Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL) is one of 16 National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRC's) funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The mission of these centers is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages.
GALILEO Open Learning Materials
GALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.
Grand Valley State University: Open Educational Resources
Includes links to multidisciplinary collections as well as subject areas.
LibreText
LIbre Tex Project is result of DOE $5 million Open Textbooks Project award in 2018, with a team of faculty from variety of institutions led by University of California-Davis, developing this site.
MERLOT
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
MIT OpenCourseware
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
OER Commons
OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners.
Open Michigan
Open Michigan enables the University of Michigan community to make the products of its research, teaching, and creative work available to the world beyond campus.
OpenStax
OpenStax, a nonprofit educational initiative based at Rice University, publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are free online and low cost in print.
Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
OPEN Washington
OPEN Washington, an Open Educational Resources (OER) network, provides easy and organized access to OER.