Learn More About

OER

OER stands for Open Educational Resources.

Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, or self-learner.

OER may be either Course-Related Materials or Libraries and Collections items. Course-Related Materials include both Full Courses and Learning Modules. Components include syllabi, lectures, lesson plans, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials, games, and simulations. Libraries and Collections items are resources from digital media collections or libraries of digitized primary sources. Browse by clicking on the OER tab above or by clicking Browse OER

Course-Related Materials

Course-Related Materials are OER intended for teaching and learning.

Course-Related Materials include both Full Courses and Learning Modules. Components of Course-Related Materials include syllabi, lectures, lesson plans, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials, games, and simulations.

There are multiple ways to find Course-Related Materials:

• Browse Course-Related Materials by Subject or Grade Level.
• Choose Full Course or Learning Modules to see all or part of a course.
• Select components of Course-Related Materials. Examples include syllabi, lectures, simluations, and activities.

Browse by clicking on the OER tab above or by clicking Browse OER

Libraries and Collections

Libraries and Collections items are resources from digital media collections and libraries of digitized primary sources.

Use the OER Commons browse or search functions to find primary sources, special collections of pedagogical materials, and other tools, texts, and reference-based web sites that are useful for teaching and learning. Browse by clicking on the OER tab above or Browse OER

Searching

There are several ways to search for materials in on OER Commons.

• Search: You can perform a simple search by putting in Keywords into the Search box. Any word or words that are included in the description about an OER item is searched. After seeing the results, you can click on “filter results” to refine the search by a wide range of criteria.
• Advanced Search: You can perform an advanced search for any word or words and can refine the search in advance by a wide range of criteria common to OER. After seeing the results, users can click on “filter results” to refine the search further. Advanced Search now
• Quick Search: When in My Portfolio, you can search items that are only in your own My Portfolio area by using the Quick Search box in the left-column.
• As a logged-in member of OER Commons, you can always save your searches for future use and re-use.

Subject Areas

These broad Subject Areas provide an easy entry to browsing and classifying OER:

• Arts
• Business
• Humanities
• Mathematics and Statistics
• Science and Technology
• Social Sciences

OER items can fall into more than one of these Subject Areas.

Use specific subject categories and sub-disciplines as Keywords for doing a Search or Advanced Search.

Feel free to Tag an OER item with a specific subject category term that would be useful for you.

Grade Levels

Primary, Secondary, and Post-secondary: These three broad ranges provide easy entry for browsing OER and are common terms used internationally.

These Grade Levels are outlined here:

• Primary: includes Pre-K through Grade 8; Elementary; Middle School
• Secondary: includes Grades 9 through 12; High School
• Post-secondary: includes all higher education; college and university levels; graduate levels; professional training

Specific grade level terms may be helpful as Keywords when searching.

You can add specific Grade Levels as tags to OER, which makes them easier to find and use.

My OER Portfolio

When you register for OER Commons with a user name and id, your portfolio area is created at My OER Portfolio. Register for free in order to use the portfolio features.

Log in and go to My OER Portfolio for quick access to your previous saved searches and other contributions to the site, including all your tags, ratings, reviews, favorites, comments, and submissions. You can make your own Top Ten List and share it with others.

A portfolio can be kept private or can be shared with others, and you can always change the settings as well as customize your profile information.

As a member, you can view others' portfolios to see how people are finding, using, and interacting with OER. Go to Shared Portfolios.

Conditions of Use

OER Commons encourages the use of the Creative Commons licenses to govern the use of OER, but does not require them. Creative Commons is a framework for institutions and authors to specify limitations and freedoms around use and reuse of resources, beyond traditional copyright.

OER Commons allows Content Providers to describe custom licensing agreements that cover their resources. Many resources may inherit legacy licensing and copyright arrangements. Although we seek to point to open and reusable content, OER Commons in no way promotes the use of materials outside the particular legal restrictions imposed by a resource author or provider.

A brief introduction from Creative Commons' Choosing a License is here:

Offering OER under a Creative Commons license "does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public but only on certain conditions. What conditions? You can find an overview of the Creative Commons licenses here."

All of the Creative Commons licenses require that a user or reuser of a resource "give attribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor."

OpenCourseWare

OpenCourseWare or OCW is a term coined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for its open educational resources that are organized as courses. Other institutions can join MIT’s OCW Consortium if they have at least 10 courses in a format that meets an agreed-upon definition of an OpenCourseWare.

You can search specifically for OpenCourseWare or OCW by choosing to filter your search results, or when browsing, by choosing Content Providers' collections containing these terms.

RSS

RSS offers a way to accessing information on the Internet. Instead of visiting the OER Commons site for news about the OER movement, the user can receive content, resources or search requests from OER Commons.