Library Guides: Open Access, Open Education, & More: Find OER to Use

Learning Objects and More

Textbooks, Curricula, etc.

College Open Textbooks Collaborative
more...less...
"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."
Learningpod
more...less...
"Learningpod's goal is to help our community build the largest library of free, online practice questions in the world."
Open Textbooks from MIT
OpenStax CNX Library
more...less...
"The content in OpenStax CNX comes in two formats: modules, which are like small "knowledge chunks," and collections, which are groups of modules structured into books or course notes, or for other uses. Our open license allows for free use and reuse of all our content."
OpenStax Textbooks
more...less...
"Our free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of your course."

Open Courses

edX Free Online Courses "EdX offers interactive online classes and MOOCs from the world’s best universities, colleges and organizations. Online courses from MITx, HarvardX, BerkeleyX, UTx and many other universities can be taken here. Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more. EdX is a non-profit online initiative created by founding partners Harvard and MIT."
Lumen Learning "Lumen Learning publishes open courses to make it easier for faculty members to adopt and teach with open educational resources (OER). And to make education more affordable for thousands of students every year."
MIT Open Courseware "MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity."
Open Course Library "The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts."
Open Learning Initiative - Carnegie Mellon "WHAT WE DO The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University, offering innovative online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to create high-quality courses and contribute original research to improve learning and transform higher education."
Open Yale Courses "What is Open Yale Courses? Open Yale Courses (OYC) provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public free of charge via the Internet. The courses span the full range of liberal arts disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences. Registration is not required. No course credit, degree, or certificate is available through the Open Yale Courses website."
Saylor "Our mission is to enable you to fast-track your future with on-demand education as flexible as it is convenient. Our tuition-free courses, created by credentialed educators, are ready when – and where – you are. Our partnerships with colleges, universities, and businesses make truly affordable credentials a reality. Our students share the conviction that owning their education is one of the surest paths to success, and that what they can do is every bit as important as where and how they learn to do it."

Copyright

When using OERs, it is important to understand that just because it is online, doesn't mean it is free to use in your class. Laws such as the TEACH Act and Fair Use allow for the use of copyrighted materials in certain circumstances. Click the links below to learn more about copyright and fair use.

Columbia University Guidance on Fair Use

Creative Commons Licensing

Many OERs have Creative Commons licenses which allow you to use, share, and modify works for the classroom. You can also license how you would like your OERs used in the future. More information can be found on the Creative Commons website.

About Creative Commons Licenses

How to License Your Work

Accessibility

It is important to ensure that OERs provided in the classroom is accessible to all users. This includes adding captions to or providing a transcript to videos, making text screen readable, and websites meet WCAG standards. Using the Universal Design framework can help with this. CUNY also provides guidance on making your OER accessible. Learn more below.

University of Washington Center for Universal Design in Education

CUNY Accessibility Toolkit for OERs

Video

Photos

Flickr Advanced Search - Creative Commons
At the bottom of the search options, put a check in the box next to "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content."
more...less...
When a photographer chooses a Creative Commons license for their work, they are giving permission in advance for others to use their work. Along with granting to permission to use the material, the Creative Commons license may have some restrictions, such as the material may not be used commercially or may not be modified in any way. For more information on Creative Commons licenses, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Google Image Search (Limited to "Labeled for Reuse")
After entering search terms and getting a list of results, click on "Search tools" in the menu above the results. Then click on "Usage rights" and choose "Labeled for reuse" or other appropriate option from the drop-down menu. This searches Flickr Creative Commons licensed photos, Wikimedia, and other sites.
iStockPhoto
Photos and animations. Faculty can contact Bruce Naples with image number for purchase.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Enter keywords in the "Search the Collection" box. On the results page, put a checkmark in the box for "Show only results with unrestricted images" to see images that are freely available to use (under public domain).
more...less...
For more information on using this site, see the LACMA blog Unframed.
National Gallery of Art Images
Images of art in the National Gallery, available at no cost.
National Park Service Digital Images Archive
Public domain photos from the National Park Service.
NOAA Photo Library
"The NOAA Photo Library has been built so as to capture the work, observations, and studies that are carried on by the scientists, engineers, commissioned officers, and administrative personnel that make up this complex and scientifically diverse agency."
Public Domain Images
From the site description: "Public domain images, royalty free stock photos, copyright friendly free images. Not copyrighted, no rights reserved. All pictures on this site are explicitly placed in the public domain, free for any personal or commercial use."
SIRIS (Smithsonian images)
"The Image Gallery includes over 530,000 electronic images from several archival repositories and museums at the Smithsonian."
Wikimedia Commons
Search box is in upper right. On results page scroll down for media (photos, etc.). Includes photos and more that are no-cost, under public domain, Creative Commons and other licenses.

Open Access, Open Education, & More: Find OER to Use