Skip to Main Content

Affordable Course Materials and Open Educational Resources (OER) for Faculty


Email this link:

OER search tips

Tips for Searching OER:

  1. Use the advanced searching feature if there is one. This will save you some time and limit your search.
  2. Start with broad terms (ex. disease instead of cancer) and then narrow.
  3. As you narrow, think about disciplinary language. Is there something else this topic might be referred to as?
  4. If you still aren't getting good results, try to start with the browsing feature (even if it's very broad). Sometimes the term your searching isn't used but you still know it would be under a broad subject like "humanities" or "writing".

Find OER tools and repositories

General OER sites

Resources across disciplines and formats

OER databases and search engines

Recorded lectures & video tutorials search

Open textbook search

Modular course components

Complete  courses

Subject specific OER

Math

Humanities

Language Learning

Sciences

Education

Social Sciences

Nursing and Allied Health

Library licensed eBook collections

Evaluate OER options

Here are a few steps you might take in the evaluation process. If this process seems lengthy, think about the process you follow to review textbooks and other materials for your course. You can use a similar or modified evaluation process to that.

  1. Does this OER cover the content you'd like your students to learn in this course or module?
  2. How accessible is this content? Will it be accessible for your students or is it too technical? Or, vice versa, is it robust and challenging enough for your students?
  3. How can you use the content? Verify the license that the resource is under. Can you remix or revise the OER as long as it isn't for commercial purposes? Who do you have to credit if you use it? Will you be able to use it? For more help with this, please contact a librarian.
  4. Once you determine how you can use the OER, what would you like to do with it? Does only a portion of it apply to your class? Would you possibly want to combine this OER with another OER or resource? Does the library have access to articles that could act as supplemental readings? (For more information, please contact a librarian).
  5. As you collect more OER and other resources, save them in a central location. Take note of how you envision using them. Align these resources with the learning objectives and weekly lessons on your syllabus in order to identify gaps. 

Guide copyright, permissions, and attributions

This research guide was produced by Nicole Arnold and Nicole Carpenter, built off the work of Allegra Swift at UCSD and Elizabeth Salmon at UC Merced.