University Library: Open Educational Resources: Getting Started

Guiding the conversation

About open educational resources (OERs)

“OERS are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.”

Source: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

OERs can be legally and freely copied, used, adapted and shared. Wiley refers to this as the 5 R's of openness:

Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

There are many advantages to using OERs. These include:

Financial savings increase student retention and satisfaction
Equitable access across large cohorts
Customizable content e.g. by geographic context
Multiple and accessible formats
Quick circulation
Resources can be updated more frequently as new knowledge emerges
Students do just as well, or better using OER than traditional textbooks (Hilton, 2016)

Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: A review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64, 573–590. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9434-9

Some examples of how OER's have been used:

History - open textbook

A second year history subject required students to purchase an expensive print textbook. With the help of the library, the lecturer located an appropriate OER textbook and combined this with other library resources into their learning management site. Student retention rates improved in this subject and were accompanied by minimal change in learning outcomes. When surveyed at the end of semester, student respondents stated that they perceived the quality of the open textbook to be the same or better than commercial textbooks used in other courses.

Physiotheraphy - labs online

Due to COVID19 social distancing restrictions, lecturers were required to postpone first semester laboratory sessions. A colleague at another Australian University shared lab recordings from the previous semester which were openly licenced. This allowed the lecturer to edit these recordings to create 'mashups' which covered key learning outcomes for unit.

Medicine - wiki creation

Students were asked to find a 'stub' or create a Wikipedia article for their first year population and preventative health assessment. This encouraged students to build their digital dexterity by developing web editing skills. It also developed information literacy skills by ensuring articles were appropriately referenced. Students added to the pre-existing body of knowledge in the area by creating an OER and making authoritative medical information more readily accessible, while also creating work that they can share with future employers.

Using an OER

Many OERs are published under a Creative Commons (CC) license. This license lets you know how the material can be used, reused, adapted and shared. You can find more information about CC in the Copyright guide.

The Open Education Licensing (OEL) Toolkit also provides tailored information about copyright and licensing when using OERs.

Publishing an OER

If you are planning to publish teaching materials as an OER you should consult the OER Licensing Checklist.Creative Commons also has a licence wizard that can help you determine the most appropriate license type. Remember OERs can only include openly licensed and public domain materials.

OER Capability Toolkit
The OER Capability Toolkit aims to provide educators a fundamental understanding in the use and creation of OER in an Australian context

As with other educational resources, OERs need to be evaluated to ensure they are suitable for their intended use. Use the checklist below to assist with this process

Criteria

License type

License permits educational use
License allows modification and adaption

Quality

The text is professionally presented, clear and understandable
Images, audio and videos are high quality
Easy to locate and navigate
Interactive resources promote student learning and engagement

Suitability

Aligned with teaching objectives
Clearly written and right for students ability and understanding
Appropriately current

Credibility

Creator is identified, qualified and reputable
Accurate content
Peer reviewed
Free from bias

Accessibility

Is the material closed captioned and screen reader accessible
Alternative formats are available (PDF or Word)

Finding OERs

Multidisciplinary collections

Australian Tertiary OER Repository
Unique Australian-authored or Australian-context content. Hosted by OER Commons.
BC OpenEd Libraries
Canadian OER site covering humanities, social sciences, education, health and medicine, business and science.
HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
Knowledge Unlatched: Open Research Library
Includes books and journal titles across a range of subjects
Learning and teaching repository: Universities Australia
Teaching and learning resources produced by the Australian Government's Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT), its predecessor bodies and related material.
Merlot (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching)
The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of peer-reviewed discipline-specific learning materials.
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources
Subject areas include arts and humanities, science, business, education and mathematics.
Sciendo
Sciendo publishes open access journals and books in all major academic disciplines. Owned by academic publisher De Gruyter.

Search tools

DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
Indexes international peer-reviewed OA journals of all disciplines, with a quality control process to determine inclusion.
OASIS
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 97 different sources.
Google Advanced Search
Select usage rights to filter to creative commons content.

Australian

CAUL OER catalgoue
The CAUL Open Educational Resources Collective includes a collection of textbooks published by authors at participating Australian universities.
ANU Press
ANU have a range of scholarly texts which are free to download.
La Trobe eBureau
The La Trobe eBureau publishes engaging, high quality, open-access ebooks. The mission of the eBureau is to invest in the development of quality open access resources to support online and blended learning.
Sydney Open Library
Sydney Open Library (SOL) hosts academic monographs and textbooks published by Sydney University Press in open access, covering subjects across the humanities and social sciences.
University of Adelaide Press
Almost all titles have been published as a free eBook (pdf format), with some additionally available for print purchase. Creative Commons licences have been in place since 2013.
University of Southern Queensland
UNISQ's collection available on the Pressbooks platform
UTS ePress
UTS ePRESS is the open access publishing arm of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

International

Directory of Open Access Books
Search for academic, peer reviewed Open Access books.
Pressbooks Directory
Pressbooks Directory is a free, searchable catalog that includes open access books published by 153 organisations and networks using Pressbooks.
Internet Archive
A range of multidisciplinary open source textbooks.
IntechOpen
Open Access textbooks across social sciences and humanities, health sciences, life sciences and physical sciences and technology.
Open Stax
Open access peer reviewed textbooks written by subject experts. Supported by Rice University (USA).
Open SUNY Textbooks
Open SUNY Textbooks is an open textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries.
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.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a large library collection of free eBooks. Focus of the collection are classics and works where copyright has expired.
LibreTexts
Non-profit organization committed to freeing the textbook from the limitations and costs of traditional textbooks. Run by University of California.

Journals

EDP Science Journals
EDP Open is the Open Access arm of EDP Sciences. Covers health sciences, life sciences, chemistry, mathematics and computer sciences.
The Lancet Public Health
The Lancet Public Health publishes high-quality original research, comment, and correspondence that can advance public health policies and outcomes.
National Academies Press
The National Academies Press (NAP) publishes the reports of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics including science and medicine.
Open Sciences Directory
Created by EBSCO & Hasselt University Library the directory aims to to create a global search tool for all open access and special programs journal titles.
PLOS journals
PLOS publishes a suite of influential Open Access journals across all areas of science and medicine. Rigorously reported, peer reviewed and immediately available without restrictions.
PubMed Central Journal List
PubMed is a free database primarily providing access to MEDLINE references and abstracts. MEDLINE is the US National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences.

Multimedia

Bio Image
Lane Medical Library (Stanford University) database that enables discovery of biomedical images in the public domain or licenced under CC.
CSIRO Science Image
Image library specialising in science and nature images. It is presented by CSIRO, Australia's major science research organisation. All images are CC licenced.
Public Health Image Library (PHIL)
Select 'public domain' & search for open access photos from the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
PhET Interactive Simulations
Free interactive math and science simulations based on extensive education research. From University of Colorado Boulder.
Virtual Labs
an initiative of MERLOT and SkillsCommons, is a collection of free virtual labs, experiments, and simulations, for STEMM disciplines. Many of the resources are open source but check licence terms before adapting or downloading.

Creative Commons Image Search
CC Search is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain images to be discovered and used by everyone.
Flickr: The Commons
The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives.
Google Images
Add 'Creative Commons' to your search term(s); check for any specific licence requirements
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Includes digitised prints, photographs, maps and manuscripts.
Trove
Search thousands of photographs, negatives, artworks, drawings, posters, postcards and other pictures.

Ted Talks
Ideas worth spreading. A range of different talks on a wide variety of subjects. Worth looking at.
Vimeo
Browse the Creative Commons licensed videos on Vimeo.
YouTube
Once you have performed your search, use the 'Filters' drop-down menu to select 'Creative Commons' from the 'Features' section.

dig.ccMixter Music
Free to use music provided under a CC BY licence.
Free Music Archive
Contains creative commons and public domain sound files.
Soundcloud
Use the 'filter results' option to search for creative commons music.

Open Educational Resources

The 5 R's of Openness

Contact details

Guiding the conversation

About open educational resources (OERs)

Finding OERs