Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) 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.

– Hewlett Foundation

This infographic shows how the difference between works in public domain, works with open licenses, and works that are All Rights Reserved.

Difference between open license, public domain and all rights reserved copyright by Boyoung Chae — Difference between open license, public domain and all rights reserved copyright by Boyoung Chae. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 International.

The most common open license applied to open resources are Creative Commons licenses. What are Creative Commons licenses?

Where can I find open educational resources?

Here are some good places to start looking for OER:

Google Advanced Search – OER files

Creative Commons Search – OER files

Wikimedia Commons – OER files

Flickr Creative Commons – OER photos

Pixabay – CC0 photos

YouTube (using Creative Commons filter) – OER videos

Internet Archive – OER files

Khan Academy YouTube videos – OER videos

TED / TED-Ed – OER videos

CollegeOpenTextbooks – Open textbooks

OpenStax – Open textbooks

BCcampus OpenEd – Open textbooks

Saylor.Org Academy – Open courses/textbooks

Merlot – OER files

MIT OpenCourseWare – OER course materials