Library: Copyright for Educators: OER

What is OER?

OER stands for Open Education Resources. These are any type of educational resources available to universities, educators, and students with little to no cost. These resources can include textbooks, syllabi, assignments, quizzes, and other course materials that have been put in the public domain or published with open access licenses so that others can use and re-purpose them.

OER Materials

BC Campus - Open Collection
Course materials searchable by topic. These are marked as whether they have been reviewed by faculty, adopted, and if they have extra resources also available.
Merlot
Browse open source materials by discipline and filter by topic or type of materials. Includes resources beyond textbooks such as case studies, portfolios, quizzes, course modules, and tools for building your own course module and materials.
MIT OpenCourseWare (MITOCW)
Course materials available and searchable by department or subject. Materials can include syllabus, assignments, readings, and video lectures (not all courses include open source textbooks). Graduate and Undergraduate levels are available.
OERCommons
Resource for building course modules and materials for K-12 and higher learning. You must have an account on the site and it is free to register. Has curated collections of open course materials. The collections are grouped by topic and can be filtered by education level, type of material/resource, subject, language, and education standard.
OpenCourse Library
Developed courses include readings, units, syllabi, and learning objectives for 81 courses. Some courses are paired with a textbook that should not exceed $30.00 per student to purchase.
OpenStax Textbooks
Open license textbooks available for free online or low cost print-on-demand. Also includes community created materials and courses.
Open Textbook Library
Open source textbooks browsable by subject available free digitally or printed for a low cost. These are gathered from other online sites and has a place for user reviews.
The Orange Grove
Open course materials include textbooks, online learning resources, and courseware gathered from institutions of higher education and other sources around the web.
Pressbooks
A free, searchable catalog that includes over 6,000 open access books published by hundreds of higher education organizations.
World Digital Library
Books, manuscripts, maps, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, films, and prints/photographs available online. Searchable by place, language, time period, topic, type of item, and institution.

OER Resources

BC Campus
Information, guides, and toolkits for adapting OER and using it in your classroom.
COW (Community for Open Wisconsin)
Wisconsin based community dedicated to OER through WiLS.
OER Foundation
Networking site to provide support for educators and sites trying to implement open learning. The site has information about the foundation, member organizations, and tools to build books for members.
Open Educational Resources - Madison College
Information about OER, how to find resources, and other general information.
What is OER? - Fox Valley Technical College
Videos and links with additional information on OER, what it is, the impact of OER, and how it is implemented.

Books in the Public Domain

Alex Catalogue
Bartleby.com
byGosh.com
Classic Book Library
The Digital Book Index
HathiTrust
A partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. Some items in this collection allow full text access, and some items have limited access.
LibriVox
Free audiobooks from the public domain. Once downloaded, you can listen to them on your computer or portable device, or burn them to a CD.
Online Books Page
Project Gutenberg
The first and largest single collection of free electronic books. You can can download thousands of free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device.

Creative Commons

Watch this video to learn more about Creative Commons.

Books

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig
ISBN: 9781594201721
Publication Date: 2008
Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
Call Number: Ebook
ISBN: 9780786547982
Publication Date: 2004

Websites

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Copyright for Educators: OER

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