Affordable Course Materials and Open Educational Resources (OER) for Students: Find & Use OER

Instructors can find OER in a variety of resources. Most OER organizations or collaborations have a database or central list of resources that faculty have added. Some databases also feature annotations or faculty feedback. Additionally, many disciplines have their own OER websites. The list below is not comprehensive but can instead be used as a starting point for faculty doing interdisciplinary work or work in any discipline. Remember that not all of the learning materials in these repositories and sources are OER for modifying but most of the content is freely available under Fair Use and/or with attribution.

Resources across Disciplines and Formats

OER Databases and Search Engines

Recorded Lectures & Video Tutorials Search

Open Textbook Search

Modular Course Components

Complete Courses

Math

Humanities

Language Learning

American Sign Language

• A large collection of sign language OER on the OER listserv conversations page can be found here:
  http://www.ltcconline.net/greenl/oer/oerlistfromlistserve.htm#Sign_Language
• The work of Dr. Joanne Weber, Canada Research Chair in Deaf Education. She wrote a blog post: https://pressbooks.com/accessibility/could-pressbooks-support-ebook-creation-for-deaf-education. She has a public domain work, "Deaf Education" https://openeducationalberta.ca/deafeducation/
• A book created at Western Oregon University: “Integrated and Open Interpreter Education,” https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/interpretingstudies

Sciences

Education

Social Sciences

Nursing and Allied Health

Business

• Open Textbook Library
  Accounting, finance, human resources, management, marketing
• MIT Open Courseware
  Accounting, business ethics, entrepreneurship, finance, globalization, healthcare management, leadership, human resources, IT, management, marketing, operations research, real estate, supply chain management
• Waymaker/Lumen Learning: Business Courses
  Accounting for Managers, Financial Accounting, Intro to Business, Principles of Marketing, Concepts in Statistics, human resources, management, organizational behavior, retail management
• Open Course Library
  Accounting, business, business law, business calculus
• Bookboon
  Accounting, management, teams, project management, marketing, human resources, finance, communication
• OpenStax textbooks
  Business ethics, business law, management, IP, accounting, business statistics
• Connexions
  Business ethics, business law, organizational behavior, accounting, management
   
• Sources for Case Studies
  • Mega-sites:
    • Free & Open Business Case Studies (Ryerson University)
    • Business Cases: Open Access Case Studies (Boston University Libraries)
    • Open Case Studies (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology)
  • Other sources:
    • Sustainable business case book
    • Social Science Research Network (SSRN) search for “case studies”
      • Management Educator: Courses, Cases & Teaching e-journal
    • Journal of Business Case Studies
    • Journal of Business Cases & Applications
    • Journal of Case Studies
    • Case Studies in Business & Management

These resources are arranged by format for those interested in using data or other types of content. See also the UC San Diego Library Open Access guide to locate open access books, journals, data, cultural materials, images, etc...

Open Access Data Sets

• Datasets for Teaching and Learning - NC State Libraries
• Open Datasets, OER - Case Western University

Tips for Searching OER:

1. Use the advanced searching feature if there is one. This will save you some time and limit your search.
2. Start with broad terms (ex. disease instead of cancer) and then narrow.
3. As you narrow, think about disciplinary language. Is there something else this topic might be referred to as?
4. If you still aren't getting good results, try to start with the browsing feature (even if it's very broad). Sometimes the term your searching isn't used but you still know it would be under a broad subject like "humanities" or "writing".

Also, see below for an infograpic which visualize the process of searching for OER.
*Note: this infographic was adapted and modified from the University of Texas at Austin's original infographic. For more information, see their Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning website.