LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Open Educational Resources

Open Access textbooks

InTech Open Access Books InTechOpen has 2,858 Open Access books published, which is the world’s largest Open Access book collection.
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This number translates to more than 40,000 chapters - openly available worldwide for other researchers to read, download, share, reuse and serve as inspiration for new, potentially groundbreaking discoveries.
Affordable Learning Georgia Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG) is: A University System of Georgia (USG) initiative to promote student success by providing affordable textbook alternatives A one-stop service to help USG faculty and staff identify lower-cost, electronic, free, and open educational resources (OER), building on the cost-effective subscription resources provided by GALILEO and the USG libraries A California State University-MERLOT partner benefit service
OPEN STAX About Us OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and our library has since scaled to more than 25 books for college and AP courses used by hundreds of thousands of students. Our adaptive learning technology, designed to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational paths, is being piloted in college courses across the country. Through our partnerships with philanthropic foundations and our alliance with other educational resource companies, OpenStax is breaking down the most common barriers to learning and empowering students and instructors to succeed.
College Textbooks ABOUT COLLEGE OPEN TEXTBOOKS The College Open Textbooks Collaborative, a collection of twenty-nine educational non-profit and for-profit organizations, affiliated with more than 200 colleges, is focused on driving awareness and adoptions of open textbooks to more than 2000 community and other two-year colleges. This includes providing training for instructors adopting open resources, peer reviews of open textbooks, and mentoring online professional networks that support for authors opening their resources, and other services. The initiatives and leadership of College Open Textbooks are driven by member organizations including AcademicPub, Benetech Bookshare, Bridgepoint Education, Bronx Community College, California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, Carnegie Mellon University, Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, Flat World Knowledge, Florida Virtual Campus, Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Houston Community College, Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), League for Innovation in the Community College, Link-Systems International, Macmillan DynamicBooks, MathScore, MentorCloud, MERLOT, Open Assembly, Open Education Resources Center for California, OER Commons, Rice University Connexions, Silicon Valley Education Foundation, SoftChalk, Tacoma Community College, Textbook Media, THiNKaha, Virtual Ability, and Words & Numbers.
Textbook Affordability Project The purpose of the Textbook Affordability Project (TAP) is to promote awareness of and access to textbook affordability issues and provide solutions to make course materials available that are up-to-date, satisfy academic needs, and are affordable to students.In the 2012-2013 school year, students at four-year public colleges like the University of South Florida spent an average of $1,200 on textbooks, according to collegeboard.com. College textbook prices are at an all-time high and are being driven by an unchallenged market with an imbalance of power held by the textbook publishers. Five textbook publishers are responsible for 80% of the textbooks within the $8 billion publishing industry. When there is limited competition, the publishers can charge whatever they want at the expense of students and their families. In addition, publishers issue new editions every year or two, even with minor changes, thus eradicating the more affordable used textbook market.
Open Access Textbook Websites: FIPSE Grant Project The Florida Distance Learning Consortium is a network of all public (39) post secondary institutions in Florida that serve 1.3 million postsecondary students annually. This legislatively funded entity supports all institutions in their delivery of technology mediated learning through quarterly meetings, web services and resources including an online catalog of distance learning courses at www.distancelearn.org and an emerging storehouse of learning content and open textbooks, The Orange Grove Repository.
Open Textbook Library Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization. The Open Textbook Library is supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Textbook Network.
Introduction to Criminal Law Introduction to Criminal Law v. 1.0 If you would like to use this book offline, you may download a copy of the full book as a PDF (112 MB, suitable for printing or most e-readers), or a .zip file containing these HTML files (for use in a web browser offline). Individual chapter PDFs are available below.
BC Campus Open Ed Resources Search for quality open textbooks offered in a variety of digital formats; the first step in adopting open educational resources. Search by subject and download them to your computer.
Maryland Open Source Textbook Commons The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) Commons is an online space designed to support faculty and staff in discovering materials, collaborating with colleagues, and contributing OER to improve curricula.

Project Gutenberg

Free Courses

MOOC.org Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are free online courses available for anyone to enroll. MOOCs provide an affordable and flexible way to learn new skills, advance careers and deliver quality educational experiences at scale.
Open Yale Courses Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.
Saylor.org Learn new skills, earn credit toward a degree, or advance your career at your own pace. Build a bridge to better anywhere, at any time, with free courses at Saylor Academy.
9 Sites for Free Online Courses

Digital Public Library of America

Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America amplifies the value of libraries and cultural organizations as Americans’ most trusted sources of shared knowledge. DPL does this by collaborating with partners to accelerate innovative tools and ideas that empower and equip libraries to make information more accessible. DPL works with a national network of partners to: Make millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the country available to all in a one-stop discovery experience. Provide a library-controlled marketplace and platform for libraries to purchase, organize, and deliver ebooks and other e-content to their patrons. Convene library leaders and practitioners to explore and advance technologies that serve, inform, and empower their communities.

Open Source Options to Support Teaching

OASIS- All in One Search Tool 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 117 different sources and contains 388,707 records.
MERLOT MERLOT is a community of staff, volunteers, and members who work together in various ways to provide users of OER (Open Educational Resource) teaching and learning materials with a wealth of services and functions that can enhance their instructional experience. You can learn more about the community by clicking on the links below.
Open Adoption Impact Explorer This interactive tool lets users adjust a range of Institutional Settings to match their local context and estimate what the impact of adopting OER would be on their students and campus. Users can also tinker with a group of Research-based Settings to make the estimates more conservative or more aggressive. The goal of the Explorer is to provide OER advocates with rigorously modeled, data-based arguments that they can use in conversations with a wide range of stakeholders (faculty, administration, students, policy makers, etc.).
Creative Commons Creative Commons helps you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. We unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity.

Open Access Videos

ASAP Science Channel- YouTube
Crash Course Channel - YouTube
Nova PBS -YouTube
Science Channel-YouTube
Smithsonian Channel
YouTube # Education
FedFlix- Internet Archive FedFix features the best movies of the United States Government, from training films to history, from our national parks to the U.S. Fire Academy and the Postal Inspectors, all of these fine flix are available for reuse without any restrictions whatsoever.
Science Cinema-Department of Energy Contains multimedia videos highlighting the U.S. Department of Energy's scientific research. State-of-the-art audio indexing and speech recognition technology allows the user to search for specific words and phrases spoken by the presenter in these video files. Simply enter a term and the results list will point to the precise snippets of the video where the term was spoken.
Teacher Tube This YouTube for teachers is an amazing resource for finding educationally-focused videos to share with your classroom. You can find videos uploaded by other teachers or share your own.

Open Culture

Open Culture
Free ebooks, online courses, audio books, movies, and podcasts

Open Source Subject Area Databases

Open Access Repositories/Libraries

National Science Digital Library Who We Are and What We Do The National Science Digital Library provides high quality online educational resources for teaching and learning, with current emphasis on the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines—both formal and informal, institutional and individual, in local, state, national, and international educational settings. The NSDL collection contains structured descriptive information (metadata) about web-based educational resources held on other sites by their providers. These providers have contribute this metadata to NSDL for organized search and open access to educational resources via this website and its services. Most resources in the library adhere to principles of Open Educational Resource (OER) access, although some resources are restricted to provider site membership, or may have a cost associated with them (indicated in the full record of the resource).
Directory of Open Access Repositories OpenDOAR provides a quality-assured listing of open access repositories around the world. OpenDOAR staff harvest and assign metadata to allow categorisation and analysis to assist the wider use and exploitation of repositories. Each of the repositories has been visited by OpenDOAR staff to ensure a high degree of quality and consistency in the information provided: OpenDOAR is maintained by SHERPA Services, based at the Centre for Research Communications at the University of Nottingham. Introduction to the service By 2003, a multiplicity of Open Access research archives had grown up around the world, mushrooming in response to calls by scholars, researchers and open access advocates to provide open access to research information. There were then a number of different lists of repositories and open access archives, but no single comprehensive or authoritative list which recorded the range of academic open access repositories.
OER Commons The worldwide OER movement is rooted in the human right to access high-quality education. The Open Education Movement is not just about cost savings and easy access to openly licensed content; it’s about participation and co-creation. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning content through engaging educators in new participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning.
The Orange Grove: Florida’s Educational Open Resource Repository We exist to empower all of Florida's 20,000,000 residents to earn a college degree and find a bright career. Whether you're in high school just starting to think about college or you're already working and ready to earn or complete your degree, FloridaShines can help. We've got the resources and support you need. FloridaShines works with the state's 40 colleges and universities and other partners to help you succeed in school and beyond. Check your transcript. Register for an online course. Search libraries across the state. And a whole lot more. All designed to help you shine. FloridaShines - Florida's Student Hub of Innovative Educational Services - is a service of the Florida Virtual Campus.
Hathi Trust Full-Text Open Limited HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives.
Open Educational Resources-African Virtual Library African Virtual University (AVU) is a Pan African Intergovernmental Organization whose aim is to significantly increase access to quality higher education and training through the innovative use of Information and Communication Technologies. Founded in 1997, AVU has graduated 43,000 students across Africa and established the largest network of Open Distance and eLearning institutions in over 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. AVU works across borders and languages in Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa.
Digital Commons Network TM The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.
Open Course Library Open Course Library (OCL) offers collections of course materials that cost $30 or less for our 81 highest enrolled courses. OCL leverages open educational resources (OER) that can be used, adapted and shared for free as well as low-cost publisher materials. OCL courses and materials have undergone testing for accessibility and have been designed using the industry-standard Quality Matters (QM) rubric for assessing the quality of online courses.
WISC-Online WISC-online is a non-profit serving the private and public sectors, the products range from corporate learning solutions to free, publicly accessible instructional programs
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for enjoyment and education.

Open Source Business Resources

Literature on Open Educational Resources

Literature on OER

Open Educational Resources: Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resource Collections

Open Access textbooks

Project Gutenberg

Free Courses

Digital Public Library of America

Open Source Options to Support Teaching

Open Access Videos

Open Culture

Open Source Subject Area Databases

Open Access Repositories/Libraries

Open Source Business Resources

Literature on Open Educational Resources