Skip to Main Content

Affordable Course Materials and Open Educational Resources (OER): Find OER

OER/Open Websites and Search Tips

Instructors can find OER in a variety of resources. Most OER organizations or collaborations have a database or central list of resources that faculty have added. Some databases also feature annotations or faculty feedback. Additionally, many disciplines have their own OER websites. The list below is not comprehensive but can instead be used as a starting point for faculty doing interdisciplinary work or work in any discipline. Remember that not all of the learning materials in these repositories and sources are OER for modifying but most of the content is freely available under Fair Use and/or with attribution.

General Education Search

Recorded Lectures & Video Tutorials Search

Open Textbook Search

Modular Course Components

Complete Courses

OER and OCW Search Engines

Mathematics

Provides free problem sets for practice. Almost ten textbooks already designed for courses.

A search for all levels.

Over 15 open textbooks covering different levels of calculus, algebra, and statistics.

Free links and pre-developed courses used at Scottsdale.

Complete and high quality textbooks for precalculus, college algebra, and college trigonometry. Includes LaTeX source code for custom texts.

Humanities

Language Learning

Sciences

Education

Social Sciences

Nursing and Allied Health

In addition to using the search engines and repositories linked on this guide to find and locate OER, you can also use advanced search features when searching Google, YouTube or Flickr. You will still need to confirm the individual license of the object you select to assure it meets the appropriate Creative Commons License.

Google - Use the Advanced Search under Usage Rights select to limit your results to resources which are Free to use, modify or share. More from Google on Usage Rights.

YouTube - After searching by keyword in YouTube, use the Filters feature to filter your results to those videos with a Creative Commons License. Looking for more videos? View the Images, Audio & Video tab!

Flickr - After searching by keyword in Flickr, use the Any License filter feature to filter your results to the appropriate usage license which best suits your usage of the work. Looking for more images?  View the Images, Audio & Video tab!

Creative Commons Search - Please note that search.creativecommons.org is not a search engine, but rather offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organizations.

How the Library Can Help.

Librarians are experts in finding and evaluating resources. This includes Open Educational Resources (OER) and teaching Information Literacy classes. Librarians at The Drake LRC are subject experts that can help you navigate this new and growing area. Please contact the Research and Information Literacy Services for more information at (256)372-4712.