Research Guides: Open Educational Resources and Affordable Learning: OER

Interested in Using OER?

"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." (Hewlett Foundation)

The SUNY Oneonta OER Team will support you in adopting, adapting or creating OER for your course. Learn more and request a consultation at the TLTC OER site.

OER CONTACT FORM
1. Schedule a meeting to learn what open content is and why it may benefit your students.
2. Help find OER for the classes you are teaching.
3. Integrate OER seamlessly into your Blackboard course.
4. Get alternative formats of content including printable versions and bound books.
5. Instructors are encouraged to consult with the team at any stage of adoption.

OER Contact Form

Library Help

Ready-to-Adopt OER: SUNY OER Services
SUNY OER services offers campuses user-friendly technology to adopt, adapt, and tailor existing OER for individual needs, as well as providing guidance for creating and distributing new materials.
OpenStax Textbooks
OpenStax is a nonprofit educational initiative based at Rice University. OpenStax publishes publish high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print. OpenStax has also developed low-cost, research-based courseware that gives students the tools they need to complete their course the first time around.
Open Textbook Library
The University of Minnesota maintains the Open Textbook Library. This is a repository of original open books that have been adopted at other major universities. The University of Minnesota allows other faculty members to review books, and makes those reviews available to potential adopters.
BC Open Textbooks
Textbooks at BC Open Textbooks are created (or, where possible, re-created from existing open educational resources) by BC post-secondary faculty, reviewed by B.C. faculty and made available under a Creative Commons license.
Directory of Open Access Books
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access.
OAPEN Library
The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of open access books, and provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation.
OER Commons Textbook Hub
ISKME's digital librarians have curated collections of Open Textbooks and supplementary resources to help leverage OER in your classroom. Whether you are looking for more affordable options for your students, or dynamic content to inspire your own teaching and learning practice, this hub, organized by discipline and provider will help you discover the resources you need at your fingertips.
SUNY Open Textbooks
Open SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. This pilot initiative published high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.

Lumen Learning
Lumen Learning: Lumen provides a simple, well-supported path for faculty to teach with open educational resources inside the LMS.
Carnegie Mellon OLI
Carnegie Mellon Online Learning Initiative was a pioneer of interactive online textbooks. Their catalog is available for free to all SUNY institutions.
MIT Open Courseware
Open SUNY 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.
Open Course Library
A collection of high quality, free-to-use courses that you can download and use for teaching. All content is stored in Google docs making it easy to access, browse and download.
Saylor Academy
Saylor Academy is a nonprofit initiative working since 2008 to offer free and open online courses to all who want to learn.

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 51 different sources and contains more than 152,779 records.
Mason OER MEtafinder
The Mason OER Metafinder searches seventeen targets in real-time, instantly returning the top several hundred or so relevant hits from each site.
MERLOT
The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder webpages, together with associated comments, and bookmark collections, all intended to enhance the teaching experience of using a learning material. All of these items have been contributed by the MERLOT member community, who have either authored the materials themselves, or who have discovered the materials, found them useful, and wished to share their enthusiasm for the materials with others in the teaching and learning community. All the materials in MERLOT are reviewed for suitability for retention in the collection. Many undergo the more extensive "peer review" for which MERLOT is famous.
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 Textbook Adoption Guide
A quick 5 step guide to adopting open textbooks.
Open Textbook Adoption Worksheet
A worksheet for adopting open textbooks by Judy Baker at Rice University.
OER Evaluation Guide for Faculty
A worksheet for faculty on evaluating open educational resources.

The Library Can Help!

Libraries offer collections and services that support learning, teaching and scholarship. Librarians are experts in finding and evaluating information and resources. Contact your liaison librarian or the Library Reference Department to schedule a research consultation and learn more about our myriad online and on-site library collections and services.