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Faculty Development

Guide to Resources for Faculty Research and Development

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials (textbooks, lectures, worksheets, images, etc.) published in the public domain that may be freely used and shared. Many can be altered to fit your class. To know if you may alter the content, check the Creative Commons' licensing guide.

The benefits of using OER:

  • You will reduce the cost of educational materials for your students.
  • In some cases, you can alter content to fit your class needs.
  • Engage in the OER publishing community and add to the library of freely-available materials.

Where Can I Find OER to Use in My Class?

OER materials for higher education:

Search multiple collections at one time:

  • Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS): https://oasis.geneseo.edu
  • Mason OER Metafinder (MOM): https://mom.gmu.edu. (It searches 22 sites, including HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, and the Digital Public Library of America.)
  • MERLOT expanded search: https://www.merlot.org (Once you do a search in MERLOT, select the Other Libraries tab and it will expand the search more than 75 other sites and repositories. It also includes the option to filter by Creative Commons license. Not all MERLOT content is OER.)
  • Cool4Ed’s ISBN searchP http://www.cool4ed.org/findetextbooks (Scroll down the Cool4Ed web page to find it – it’s in the middle at the bottom of the page. Input a commercial textbook’s ISBN into the search box. Results provide links to related open textbooks in MERLOT.)
  • Google Advanced Search: https://www.google.com/advanced_search (see Usage Rights filter)

Other OER content:

Open pedagogy:

Creative Commons:

Educational Videos and Audio

These websites and tools host educational videos, podcasts, and audio clips that can be embedded into Moodle classes.