Library: OER & Library Resources for Course Development: OER Collections (eBooks, videos, simulations & more)

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How to use this guide

Open educational resources (OER) are free, openly licensed documents and multimedia that are useful for teaching, studying, and assessing learning. You can browse different types of resources by using the purple navigation menu. Additionally, this guide includes library subscription resources that can be linked/embedded in courses.

Creating Permalinks to Library Resources Easy steps for getting the correct link to articles, eBooks and videos from the Library's databases to place in online courses. We also have a short permalinks video for additional help.

How to Evaluate OER

Criteria for Evaluating Open Educational Resources
This document is intended to assist you in evaluating all types of resources being considered for course content. The list of criteria is not exhaustive, but it will give you the foundation to select the best resources to use as OER.

Mason OER Metafinder

About the Mason OER Metafinder
The Mason OER Metafinder searches seventeen targets in real-time, instantly returning the top several hundred or so relevant hits from each site.

OER Collections (eBooks, videos, simulations & more)

CK-12 Foundation CK-12 Foundation provides a library of free online textbooks, videos, exercises, flashcards, and real world applications for over 5000 concepts from arithmetic to history.
COOL4Ed: California Open Online Library for Education Free and open eTextbooks from the three State of California systems of higher education.
Creative Commons Search A global platform for finding content you can share, use, and remix.
Curriki Curriki offers thousands of vetted, curated resources for educators, students and parents. Its innovative design allows for quick and efficient searches for curated collections, units, or courses to save valuable planning time. Members can save any resource to their private Curriki Library for quick and easy access to those resources at a later time.
Internet Archive: OER Library of Open Educational Resources and university lectures. This library contains hundreds of free courses, video lectures, and supplemental materials from universities in the United States and China. Many of these lectures are available for download.
MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning & Online Teaching) Provides peer-reviewed, higher education materials for online learning.
MIT OpenCourseWare Audio and video lectures from selected MIT courses.
M.O.S.T. Commons “The Maryland Open Textbook Commons is a digital library of open educational resources.” Covers a broad range of topics in applied science, arts & humanities, business & finance, communications & media, engineering, ESL, english, health science, history, law, life science, mathematics, physical science, professional studies, and social studies (all levels of education).
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 61 different sources and contains 160,717 records.
OER Commons Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may use at no cost. OER have been created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights.
Open Community Collections (JSTOR) Open access primary source materials in a wide variety of subjects contributed by libraries, museums, and archives. Browse by collections or contributors.
Open Culture Free courses, audio book, language lessons, movies, and more!
PhET Interactive Simulations PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations; a project by the University of Colorado.
Skills Commons: Free and Open Workforce Training Materials A free digital repository of open access and open educational resources of Workforce Training Materials. Content consist of animations, assessment tools, case studies, drills and practices, hybrid and blended courses, modules, open textbooks and more. A broad range of topics are covered from Manufacturing, Finance to Telecommunications preparing the Workforce for 21st Century Employment.
Teaching Commons OER from Leading Colleges and Universities browsable by discipline
World Digital Library Authoritative, primary source materials from around the world: manuscripts, maps, rare books, music scores, prints and films. Browse by place, time, topic, material or contributor.

Subject-Specific OER Collections

CLARK Cybersecurity Library CLARK hosts the largest collection of high-value, high-impact cybersecurity curriculum created by top-researchers, peer-reviewed by instructional designers and subject matter experts." Note: All content is free but you must create a login to view it.
MERLOT II: Computer Science
MERLOT II: Engineering
MERLOT II: Information Technology
MERLOT II: Physics
Saylor Academy: Computer Science
Skills Commons: Free and Open Workforce Training Materials A free digital repository of open access and open educational resources of Workforce Training Materials. Content consist of animations, assessment tools, case studies, drills and practices, hybrid and blended courses, modules, open textbooks and more. A broad range of topics are covered from Manufacturing, Finance to Telecommunications preparing the Workforce for 21st Century Employment.
Teaching Commons: Engineering

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