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Open Educational Resources (OER): Find OER

Open Educational Resources can help students with course material costs and increase student retention and graduation rates. This guides explains how to find OER and evaluate how they can be used in a course.

OER Textbook Collections

Meta Search in OER Textbook Collections

Subject-Specific OER Guides

Most places to locate OER cover a wide range of subjects. This box contains subject-specific resources. Note that these are likely to be just one part of your search.

Complete Courses & Units

These sources provide you with complete courses or units that are entirely open. You can use an entire course, a portion of a course, or just the reading list -- whatever is relevant to your needs.

Is it an OER?

"Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment." (SPARC).

In order for a resource to be considered open, its permissions structure must permit the following:

  • Retain a copy
  • Reuse the content
  • Revise or modify
  • Remix or combine parts from various sources into one
  • Redistribute the original and your revision/remix

The most common way for permissions such as these to be stated is through a Creative Commons license. This video discusses Creative Commons license terms.  

 

You may find the following guide useful for explaining what can and can't be done with a work based on the license it carries. Click on the image to access the full document.

Guide to Creative Commons Licenses for OER

Your Subject Librarian

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Spencer Jardine
Contact:
Eli M. Oboler Library, Room 327A
850 S. 9th Ave.,
Pocatello, ID, 83201-8089
(208) 282-5609
Website

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work by D'Arcy Hutchings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Third-party content including, but not limited to images and linked items, are subject to their own license terms.

You may reproduce, reuse, or remix any part of this guide as long as credit is included. We encourage you to license your derivative works under Creative Commons as well to encourage sharing and reuse of educational materials.

Portions of this guide are based on earlier versions of an OER guide created by Jen Klaudinyi of Portland Community College (CC BY-NC US 3.0 license). I've used/adapted many links and link descriptions from Klaudinyi's guide and the Open Professionals Education Network's Find OER page (CC BY Int'l 4.0 license).

OER Info Request

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Licensing Restrictions for Use of Electronic Resources