Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Finding OER

Finding OER

In these repositories, you can find OER created by others and ready for your use or adaptation, including textbooks, lesson plans, syllabi, videos, images, and more. Browse these repositories by subject or search for materials using relevant keywords.

Repository	Pros	Cons
OER Commons	One of the largest OER repositories Covers multiple disciplines Allows for sorting by education level, reuse options, and by standard	Rating system is a bit unclear
OERTX	New OER repository from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Covers multiple disciplines Allows for sorting by education level, reuse options, and by standard	Covers most of the same resources as OER Commons since the platform is shared Rating system is a bit unclear
OpenStax	High quality textbooks for introductory level college courses	Little content for upper level courses Not much coverage in the humanities
Open Textbook Library	Large collection of textbooks with published peer reviews by professors Includes some upper level/graduate textbooks Easy to use interface	As the name suggests, the content is limited to textbooks
MERLOT II	Lots of filtering and limiting options when searching Wide range of disciplines represented Wide variety of material types	Search interface is a bit clunky
Milne Open Textbooks	Browsable by author and subject Some textbooks are also available in print for purchase	Can't sort by education level Small selection
OASIS	Searches content from over 60 different sources, you can sort by license type and type of resource.	Can't sort by education level
George Mason OER Metafinder	Simultaneously searches multiple repositories, could give you good ideas of other repositories to look in	Search interface is difficult to use Search results sometimes take you to the main page of different repository and then you have to redo your search Not easy to determine licenses for items
University of Minnesota Publishing Services	Includes journals, monographs, syllabi, and textbooks Content is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 unless otherwise noted	Can't sort by education level Small selection
CORA - Community of Online Research Assignments	Includes assignments, assessment criteria, learning outcomes, and slide decks Tagging system for subjects, ability level, and teaching group size Searches other OER repositories Teaching Toolkit has filters for discipline and resource type	Does not include textbooks Some links go to print resources not accessible online
LibreTexts Commons	Browsable by subject, location, license, author, and more. Filters for textbooks, assets, and projects Includes student-created OER	Most coverage in STEM disciplines

Finding Images and Media

To begin a search for free-to-use images, start with the Creative Commons Search Portal, which allows you to enter a term and search from a variety of image hosting sites that have CC licenses applied.

Or, try any of these open image and media collection repositories:

AllGo Plus-Size Photos featuring plus-size models by Michael Poley of Poley Creative for AllGo, publisher of free stock photos featuring plus-size people.
Black Illustrations A collection of categorized illustrations of Black people. Some collections are free, some are for purchase.
Disabled And Here Disabled And Here is a photo and interview series celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC).
EDUimages A free library of photos celebrating students and the educators who teach them in seven schools across the US. Licenced: CC BY-NC 4.0
Flickr Commons The Flickr Commons is for photos from institutions that want to share their digital collections in the public domain.
The Gender Spectrum Collection The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models.
Images of Empowerment A free library of images celebrating women’s lives and their work in 11 countries around the world
Nappy Beautiful photos of Black and Brown people, for free.
The Noun Project Comprehensive icon collection, most available for free use with attribution
Open Peeps The library works like building blocks made of vector arms, legs, and emotions. You can mix these elements to create different and diverse Peeps.
Openverse You can find over 500 million openly licensed images in Creative Commons, available for your reuse in all kinds of OER (with proper attribution).
Pexels Pexels is a website with more than 3 million free, open (Pexels license), high-resolution photos and videos.
PICNOI Free stock photos featuring images of people of color
PIXNIO Pixnio is a site with free, high quality public domain images that are tagged and categorized.
Public Domain Vectors Public Domain Vectors has a massive collection of openly-licensed vector graphics that are available to download in SVG, AI, and EPS formats.
Smithsonian Open Access Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images
Unsplash Unsplash is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography under the Unsplash license.
Wikimedia Commons WikiMedia Commons is a collection of almost 80 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.

Tools & Resources for Creating OER

Of course there's OER on creating OER! Check out some of these guides, checklists, and other resources to help you get started.

The OER Starter Kit This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education. [Version 1.1. Revised September 5th, 2019.]
The OER Starter Kit Workbook The OER Starter Kit Workbook is a remix of the OER Starter Kit to include worksheets to help instructors practice the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create open educational resources (OER). We welcome instructors, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, and anyone else interested in OER to explore the OER Starter Kit Workbook.
Authoring Open Textbooks This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools.
The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) is a living repository of collective knowledge, written to equip all those who want to publish open textbooks with the resources they need. Representing two years of collaboration, innumerable conversations and exchanges, and a wide range of collective knowledge and experience, the Guide is a book-in-progress and will evolve and grow over time.
BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide The BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide is a reference for individuals or groups wanting to write and self-publish an open textbook.This guide provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook. Copyright, open-copyright licences, and the differences between citation and attribution are discussed as well as the importance of copy editing and proofreading. Checklists and templates are also provided. This guide replaces the BCcampus Open Education Authoring Guide.
Guide to Developing Open Textbooks This how to guide has been developed to assist teachers, teaching support personnel and educational technology administrators to: understand the value of open education, OER and open textbooks for teaching and learning; appreciate the potential value of developing an open textbook platform; select appropriate technology to build an open textbook platform, using either existing services offered free on the Internet or open-source tools, based on local needs and resources; and build, manage and maintain an open textbook platforms.

Open Syllabus Banks

Want to find an openly licensed syllabus or share your own? The OER repositories on the left accept syllabi and are a great place to find them. There are also a few discipline-specific syllabus banks that might be relevant to your course:

Attribution

Content in this guide page is derived from Open Educational Resources by The University of Texas Austin Libraries under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 Generic License