Open Educational Resources (OER)

Articles, Books, Presentations and Seminars

• The Cost and Quality of Online Open Textbooks: Perceptions of Community College Faculty and Students, First Monday, January 2013. Over 125 students and 11 faculty from seven colleges responded to an online questionnaire about the cost and quality of the open textbooks used in their classrooms.
• Dramatically Bringing Down the Cost of Education with OER: How Open Education Resources Unlock the Door to Free Learning, February 2012. This issue brief from the Center for American Progress and EDUCAUSE seeks to provide a substantive understanding of OER and at the same time inform the emerging public debate over their use in public education. It is important that OER be part of the broader conversation concerning spiraling education costs and the need to make education more accessible and affordable at all levels.
• An Open Educational Resource Supports a Diversity of Inquiry-Based Learning. This article from the January 2012 issue of The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning,  explores how open education resources (OERs) are actually being used. This case study sought to shed light on the users of a well-visited set of modular music-education materials published at Connexions.
• Open Resources: The Need for Integration, EDUCAUSE 2011. This annual conference talk arguea that the various open movements need to join up to provide a more complete, higher-level educational experience. OER should link more closely to full-text open-access articles and, where useful, to research data. OER should be better placed in a pedagogical context; there should be a bigger push for open text books.
• Open Educational Resources: Access, Impact, and Sustainability Through Policy, EDUCAUSE 2011. This annual conference session explores the issue of increased availability of OER raises questions about the effect they are having on student learning and about models and policies for sustaining current efforts.
• Openness: Decoupling the Future to Radically Improve Access to Education, EDUCAUSE Live!, October 2011.
• Open Educational Resources and the Role of the University, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 46, Number 5 (September/October 2011).
• Open Courseware Initiatives and the Challenge of Sustainability, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 46, Number 4 (July/August 2011).
• Textbook Affordability: Emerging Solutions in Ohio, ELI Web Seminar, April 2011.
• 7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbook Publishing, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, March 2011.
• 7 Things You Should Know About Open Educational Resources, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, May 2010.
• A Cover to Cover Solution: How Open Textbooks are the Path to Textbook Affordability, Student PIRGs, September 2010.
• To Share or Not to Share: Is That the Question?, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 45, Number 4 (July/August 2010).
• “It Takes a Consortium to Support Open Textbooks”, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 44, Number 1 (January/February 2009).
• “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0”, EDUCAUSE Review, Volume 43, Number 1 (January/February 2008).

Web Sites with OER resources

• The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources - CCCOER is a joint effort by the OER Center for California, Foothill-De Anza Community College District, the League for Innovation in the Community College and many other community colleges and university partners to develop and use open educational resources (OER) and especially open textbooks in community college courses. 
• Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.
• eduCommons is a content management system designed specifically to support OpenCourseWare projects. eduCommons will help those in the education field  develop and manage an open access collection of course materials.
• Free Online Course Materials is a California State University MERLOT collection of over 35,000 open course materials.
• FREE: Federal Resources Educational Excellence has than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources are included from dozens of federal agencies.
• Hewlett Foundation OER page includes a link to the publication “Open Educational Resources Overview” which includes lists of OpenCourseWare, Courses and Learning Objects, Open Collections, Repositories and Portals, Open Journals and Books, and Consortia and Virtual Communities.
• Learning Beyond Textbooks is an iNACOLs website dedicated to increasing the public’s understanding of Open Educational Resources
• 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.
• The Open Course Library, from Washington State University, is a collection of expertly developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – for 81 high-enrollment college courses. 42 courses have been completed so far, providing faculty with a high-quality, affordable option that will cost students no more than $30 for textbooks.
• OER Commons was created as a network for teaching and learning materials, the web site offers engagement with resources in the form of social bookmarking, tagging, rating, and reviewing.
• The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides leadership, networking and support for educators and educational institutions to achieve their objectives through Open Education.
• KSA Digital Library is a collection of digital media related to the fields of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City and Regional Planning that may be used for teaching, learning, and research by the KSA and the global community.
• The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom's only university dedicated to distance learning. Through academic research, pedagogic innovation and collaborative partnership it seeks to be a world leader in the design, content and delivery of supported open and distance learning. The site includes Open Learn which provides free learning resources.
• WikiEducator is a community project working collaboratively with the Free Culture Movement towards a free version of the education curriculum by 2015. Driven by the learning for development agenda WikiEducator is developing free content for use in schools, polytechnics, universities, vocational education institutions and informal education settings.
• The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

Updated March 2013