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Open Educational Resources (OER)

A guide to understanding and finding Open Educational Resources, with information on current efforts at Fresno State.

Finding OER

Finding appropriate OER can be a challenge. There isn't a single catalog or index from which to search for OER, and those that are available have varying coverage and search features. The time it takes to search for possible OER candidates is often cited as an obstacle by faculty who would otherwise be interested in adopting OER. However, you can get help from your subject librarian! Contact the subject librarian for your department or college with your syllabus and any other relevant information (any texts you hope to replace, what material the OER should cover) and they will try to provide some initial OER candidates for you to review.

OER Repositories and Referatories

Here are some of the more popular places to look for OER, with short descriptions of their coverage, search features, and peer review or ratings.

Metasearch tools

These search across many repositories of Open Resources:

BC Campus

https://open.bccampus.ca/find-open-textbooks/

Open textbooks, searchable by subject, many reviewed by educators.

Libretexts

https://libretexts.org/

Open textbooks in many subjects, browsable, with tools for remixing into custom texts.

Lumen Learning

https://lumenlearning.com/courses/

OER-based courses, keyword search or browse by subject, no reviews.

MERLOT

https://www.merlot.org/

Many kinds of materials, advanced search features including ISBN search, all material is reviewed in some way.

OER Commons

https://www.oercommons.org/

Large and varied collection of resources at all levels, good search features, includes user ratings.

Open Textbook Library

http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/

Open textbooks, limited search features, many are reviewed by faculty experts.

OpenStax

https://openstax.org/subjects

Open textbooks for a variety of courses, browsable by subject, all are peer-reviewed.

(Adapted from Open Educational Resource Repository Coverage created by the Library Juice Academy Intro to OER Course, Summer 2019. Visit the link for more sources and more detail.)

Adopting OER

If you do adopt OER for your course, either as additional materials or as a replacement for traditional textbooks, please let us know! The Center for Faculty Excellence tracks use of OER at Fresno State. Contact:

Mario Banuelos
OER Faculty Fellow
mbanuelos22@csufresno.edu

or

David Drexler
Scholarly Communications Librarian
ddrexler@csufresno.edu