Open Education: How to do it
There are several resources that might be useful to the instructor who would like to know more about the open education movement and how to teach with open education resources.
- Faculty OER ToolkitThe toolkit is an information resource about, and guide to, adapting and adopting Open Educational Resources. Included are definitions and examples, information about Creative Commons licensing, and tips on how to adapt and/or adopt OER for classroom use.
- Open Education HandbookThis handbook is a primer on the open education ecosystem, information about useful tools and software, references, a glossary of commonly used terms, case studies and examples, and answers to frequently asked questions.
Key Resources
- Recommendations from the Community College Consortium's OER ListServCurated and indexed list of some of the OER recommendations that appear on the Community College Consortium's OER ListServ
- OasisOpenly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a discovery tool that searches open content from 114 different sources. OASIS is developed by SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
Free Textbooks and Repositories
- OpenStax CollegeOpenStax College offers free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. Many offer supplemental materials that would traditionally also come from a text book vendor: slides, questions banks, etc.
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- Open Textbook LibraryA catalog of open access textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members, made available by the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development.
All textbooks in this catalog are openly licensed, complete, and available in print at very little cost. - LyryxLyryx publishes open textbooks and supplements with Creative Commons open licenses, available with free access to everyone, and enabling a variety of permissions to adapt the material. The Lyryx editorial group works closely with authors and subject matter experts to develop and maintain high-quality content while also collaborating with the community by welcoming contributions.
- Community College Consortium for OEROrganization whose mission is to expand access to education by promoting awareness and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Over 250 colleges have joined and many more participate.
- MERLOT Open TextbookMultimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) is a curated resource of free and online textbooks for use in teaching and learning.
- OER Commons: Open TextbooksThis catalog contains hundreds of college-level open textbooks from higher education institutions around the world
- Digital Public Library of AmericaGood place to look for primary sources. Contains links to a wide range of multimedia objects from libraries, archives and museums around the United States (so not international). The copyright status of items vary because it is collected from many sources. However, many items are public domain or available for re-use, and there is information in a "rights" field for each item.
- Directory of Open Access BooksDOAB is a discovery service for peer reviewed open access books and book publishers that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed books.
- BC Campus OpenEdOpen textbooks for the 40 highest enrolled first- and second-year subject areas in the British Columbia's public, post-secondary system.
- Milne Open TextbooksWith the initiative of the SUNY Libraries, Milne Open Textbooks publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed textbooks for use in higher education.
- Galileo Open Learning MaterialsGeorgia State initiative provides a list of OERs for the corresponding top 50 lower-division courses (as determined by enrollment within the UG system).
- Iowa State University Digital PressThe Iowa State Universiy Digital Press is a unit of the Iowa State University Library. The university provides a grant program to encourage OER and offer open textbooks.
- MIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWare is published content from MIT courses that is open all of the time and licensed for download, remix, and reuse.
- OpenEd (BC Campus)OpenEd provides a large number of open textbooks, OER materials, and OER self-publishing guides.
Low Cost Textbooks and Repositories
- Lumen LearningSupports faculty in identifying and selecting high quality OER, aligning these to learning outcomes, and assembling them to create OER-based courses. Textbooks are free but consulting, support, assessments, etc. are available at a low per-student cost.
- Flatworld KnowledgeProvider of digital learning content and mobile adaptive social learning platform.
- VitalSourceProvider of e-textbooks and digital course materials in higher education.
eBooks from the library
Library E-books can also be used as textbook alternative or supplemental materials to enhance delivery of your course. Chapters or pages within an e-book can be linked to directly from Canvas. These are not openly licensed in most cases but still may be used without additional cost. For questions or assistance, please contact a Librarian at lrcdesk@chesapeake.edu.
