Research Guides: OER and ZTC for Faculty: Finding OER

OER Repositories and Collections

Repositories provide large collections of OER resources that you can search. They often provide useful reviews. Individual collections or OER publishers have also been included in this list.

Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
LibreText
Openly licensed "living library" of textbooks from numerous disciplines. Users can build and edit their own interactive, accessible work.
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 and contains 385,629 records. OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
OpenStax
Based at Rice University OpenStax offers high quality textbooks with adaptive learning technology, designed to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational paths.
California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4ED)
The three State of California Higher Education Systems are working together to provide easy access to quality FREE and OPEN eTextbooks that everyone and anyone can use for teaching and learning.
MERLOT
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
Skills Commons
The US Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program has created a free and open online library called SkillsCommons containing free and open learning materials and program support materials for job-driven workforce development.
BC Open Collection
A collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province [British Columbia].
Open Oregon Educational Resources
Promotes textbook affordability for community college and university students, and facilitates widespread adoption of open, low-cost, high-quality materials.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
Simultaneously search OER repositories.
Canvas Commons
Found in your Canvas campus account, these courses are openly licensed.
OAPEN: Open Access Publishing in European Networks
"The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of open access books, and provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation."

Discipline Specific Resource Lists

If you want some carefully curated list for you discipline check out the below resources:

ASCCC OERI - Open Educational Resources by Discipline
Curated discipline lists compiled by CCC faculty.
OER by Discipline Guide
The BCcampus Open Education OER by Discipline Guide is an in-progress (open creation) this lists a broad range of open educational resources organized by discipline.
Open Educational Resources Used in Various Colleges and Universities
These lists and links are harvested from the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources list serve (http://cccoer.org ) conversations and a few other sources.

Other Resources

There are many places to find openly licensed multimedia to use in your courses. You can also use free library resources in your classes. And though library resources are in general copyrighted, you can use them in a zero textbook cost class because they are free for students.

Butte College Library
The library has many resources that are free to use in your classes including databases, articles, newspapers, e-books, and more. Please contact a librarian for more information.
Pixabay Images
Over 1.5 million royalty free stock photos and videos.
Unsplash
Free high resolution photos. Attribution not required but appreciated.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content.
YouTube
Many YouTube videos have Creative Commons licenses. You will have to narrow your search results to find CC videos.
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Do a search, go to filter, under ‘Features’ select Creative Commons.

How to Evaluate OER

You should evaluate OER as you would any other resource. Here are some questions to ask when evaluating a resource:

Does the content cover the subject area appropriately?
Is the content accurate and free of major errors and spelling mistakes?
Does the license of the work allow adaptation for the course's needs?
Is the work clearly written and appropriate for the students' level of understanding?
Is the content accessible for all students?

Examples of rubrics for evaluating OER:

Faculty Guide for Evaluating OER - Developed by BCCampus OpenEd Resources (BCOER), this document provides a checklist of traits to look out for in OER.
iRubrics for Evaluating OER - This resource contains a list of questions to ask before considering whether an OER meets the needs of your course.

Adapted from Iowa State University, University Library's Evaluate OER page.