Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license.SUNY defines OER courses as where the majority of the content (over 50%) is openly licensed material.
OERs are affordable and accessible to students providing a crucial reduction in course-related expenses and first-day access to materials.
Because OERs are openly licensed, instructors can freely distribute physical and electronic copies to students. Additionally, many OERs can be adapted and remixed to suit the needs of the course.
This LibGuide provides more information about OERs and where to find them. The Center for Teaching Excellence also provides workshops, webinars, and other resources for instructors to learn more about incorporating OERs in the classroom.
If you have any questions about OER Repositories, ask the Scholarly Communications Librarian. If you need assistance integrating OER materials in your course, ask the Educational Technologist.
For Faculty
For Students
Start your OER journey with this Guide!
OERs can be used to replace supplemental readings, chapters and full textbooks, and entire course materials. The best way to implement OERs into your course is by adding one openly accessible item per semester. It can be a video, audio recording, or a short chapter.
In this Guide, you will find three categories of OERs:
It's best to browse through these databases by "Subject".
Find more resources from the Stephen B. Luce Library
Some disciplines are better represented than others. If you can't find an OER that fits your needs, use the Stephen B. Luce Library!
Use works in the Public Domain.
Use Peter Hirtle's Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States chart to determine if a work is under the Public Domain. The Center for the Study of Public Domain at Duke University is another great source for what materials are in the Public Domain.
I scanned a couple of chapters from a book and want to use them in class, is that an OER?
Items that you or others have digitized and made available to students or shared via email are not considered OERs.
An OER is openly licensed by the creator(s) or publisher. When you photocopy a portion of someone else's work for scholarly or educational purposes, you are exercising Fair Use. Check out the Copyright libguide page to learn more.
I want to use a couple of chapters from a book on OpenStax, is that an OER?
Yes! Books and other materials from OpenStax and other resources available on this libguide are considered OER.
To incorporate OERs into your course, contact the Educational Technologist to add materials to your Blackboard course.
When looking for OER materials, pay attention to the Creative Commons Licenses. These are easy to use licenses that explain how a work can be used. This quick reference guide will help you understand how you can use or modify an OER source.
This material was transformed from a PDF to a JPEG and adopted from the SUNY OER Community Course which was published freely under the Creative Commons Attribute 4.0 International License.
Identifying OERs
The core characteristics of OERs are:
OERs are educational materials in many formats that are openly available for use by educators and students without licensing fees.
Materials that are under full copyright or unaccompanied by a specific license allowing anyone to copy, adapt, or share is not Open Educational Resources. In this case, you can use materials only within the Fair Use copyright law.
Evaluating OERs
Once you have found an OER, take time to evaluate it to see if it meets your criteria based on content, presentation, online accessibility, production options, platform capabilities, and delivery options. Use these rubrics to evaluate any OER sources. All rubrics are under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0).
Credit: Lance Eaton (2018, Jan. 3) Open Educational Resources: A Brief Explination. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSekYzpBY8I
