About OER
Open Educational Resources (OER) are open license and publicly available materials for education. As the Affordable College Textbook Act was introduced, a few OER projects were initiated and funded through the U.S. Department of Education. These materials are available for anyone to use. Some resources also allow users to improve and even redistribute the resources under a Creative Commons license.
OER have gained momentum with more funding opportunities in recent years. This growth is evident from Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources. Research has shown that there have been no differences in learning efficacy between OER and commercial textbooks. However, the withdrawal rate for courses using OER is significantly lower.1 Research at Triton College has shown that even a single program adopting OER saves their students over $200,000 a semester.
Many educators, from kindergarten to higher education, have been moving away from traditional textbooks and introducing different forms of free course materials in the classroom. Subsequently, the quality and usability of these contents have been gradually improved. It also further addresses digital accessibility.
The Waubonsee Community College Library also has a robust collection of digital OER resources available for use.
OER Resources
| AMSER | Applied Math and Science Education Repository |
| BCcampus | Higher Education - B.C., Canada |
| CMU Open Learning Initiative | Carnegie Mellon University |
| GALILEO Open Learning Materials | University System of Georgia |
| JHSPH OpenCourseWare | Johns Hopkins University |
| Learn OER | Austin Community College |
| Mason OER Metafinder | George Mason University |
| MERLOT | California State University |
| MIT OpenCourseWare | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| OER@AVU | African Virtual University |
| OER Commons | K-16 |
| Open Course Library | Washington State Board |
| Open Culture | Cultural & Educational Media |
| OpenStax | Rice University |
| Open Textbook Library | University of Minnesota |
| Saylor Academy Open Textbooks | Saylor Academy |
| Stanford Open Learning Initiative | Stanford University |
| The OER Starter Kit | Iowa State University |
| The OER Starter Kit Workbook | City University of New York |
| TU Delft OpenCourseWare | Delft University of Technology |
| UMass Boston OpenCourseWare | University of Massachusetts Boston |
| World Digital Library | U.S. Library of Congress / UNESCO |
1Clinton, Virginia & Khan, Shafiq. (2019). Efficacy of Open Textbook Adoption on Learning Performance and Course Withdrawal Rates: A Meta-Analysis. AERA Open. 5. 233285841987221. 10.1177/2332858419872212.