Research Guides: Education Subject Guide: Finding Open Educational Resources

What Are Open Educational Resources?

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are created with the intention of being freely available to users anywhere.

This includes:

Textbooks
Readings
Courses
Journals
Case Studies
Software
Databases

... and much more!

Please browse this guide for more information on resources, or visit the BC Campus website.

OASIS (megasearch tool) Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)

The news release states that OASIS offers users worldwide the ability to search a range of OER materials including textbooks, courses and corresponding materials, interactive simulations, public domain books, audiobooks, modules, open access books, videos and podcasts on a variety of topics — from anthropology to zoology. OASIS also is the only tool that allows users to limit searches by creative commons licenses or by faculty review.

Open Educational Resources for Education

Digital Futures for Learning
During the Digital Futures for Learning course in 2017/18, participants created Open Educational Resources (OERs), taking the three course themes as a starting point. A selection of these OERs are available.
CCCOER Helpful Resources
A collection of resources curated by the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources that cover topics relating to OER including advocacy, open pedagogy, policy, adoption, authoring, accessibility, and more.
Educatus – University of Saskatchewan
A collection of posts by instructors on topics of open pedagogy and teaching and learning practices.

Embracing Complexity in Education
This OER is a mini-course or workshop for postgraduate level education professionals. It is relevant to any group of teachers, researchers, policy-makers, curriculum-developers, designers, etc., who approach their work with an academic focus.
Supporting Students with Disabilities Course Website
This course is designed for post-secondary faculty and staff who interact with students with disabilities, especially in the trades school context. The practical information and knowledge presented in this course will help us better understand how to create an inclusive campus and support all students in their learning and paths to success.
23 Things for Digital Knowledge
An award-winning, open, and self-paced course for digital and online skills. 23 Things for Digital Knowledge provides a structured way for staff and students to set aside that time to build up skills and experiment with new digital tools.
Shift/Work
A series of performative paragogy workshops. The workshops use open engagements with practice (work) as a means of generating and transferring new knowledge (shift), to encourage players to recalibrate artistic learning. ‘Shift/Work’ has been designed to be an iterative process, a rolling workshop that can be continually re-performed like a musical score. There are four workshops.
Lorna Campbell’s Slideshare
A collection of 85 presentations and talks created by Lorna Campbell (who has twenty years experience working in education technology and leads the OER Service within Information Services at the University of Edinburgh) about her work in open education technology, policy, and practice.

UBC Open Case Studies
Click on “Education” in the top toolbar. These case studies offer a student-centred approach to learning that asks students to identify, explore, and provide solutions to real-world problems by focusing on case-specific examples. This approach simulates real-life practice in sustainability education in that it illuminates the ongoing complexity of the problems being addressed.
Butte Biology: Learning Through Creation
This site presents the steps for designing a course where students collaboratively write a textbook. The site also presents strategies for using steps independently or in sequence to simplify course design. Each individual page also discusses educational research related to each individual strategy.
OER-Enabled Pedagogy
A description and examples of a set of teaching and learning practices that are only practical in the context of the 5R permissions characteristic of open educational resources.
Open Pedagogy Examples
A collection of examples of open pedagogy that was generated after a BC campus webinar on open pedagogy.

Accessbility Toolkit
This resource is for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook that is free and accessible to all.
B.C. Open Textbook Collection: Support Resources
collection of guides relating to open education, including publishing open textbooks, adopting open resources, adapting open resources, using Pressbooks, and setting up print-on-demand services for open textbooks.
Experiential Learning Toolkit
A website that provides information, examples, and templates for designing, delivering, facilitating, and evaluating experiential learning (EL) in post-secondary education.
Good Practices Guide
Published by the American Philosophical Association (APA), this document, over 90 pages long, contains sections on interviewing and hiring, teaching and supervising students, professional development of faculty and students, communication, social events, bias and discrimination, and mental health.
Inclusive Learning Design Handbook
The Floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook created by the Inclusive Design Research Centre is designed to assist teachers, content creators, Web developers, and others in creating adaptable and customization educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning preferences and individual needs.
OER Accessbility Toolkit by Open UBC
This resources includes visual and text examples of best practices of digital accessibility for open educational resources.
University Pedagogical Support
A learning platform for university pedagogical studies. Everyone is welcome to study the modules independently. The aim of the modules is to support university teachers by giving keys to reflect their thoughts and conceptions of teaching and learning in higher education.

Applications fo LinkedIn Learning in Ontario’s Post-Secondary Institutions
Each of the cases in this book reflect a range of approaches and perspectives of using video-based resources to increase learner engagement. The authors, through their work, encourage the reader to contemplate the impact of technology on the learner and the educator. The goal of this collection is to generate ideas for your own implementation, to promote inquiry, and to grow the community’s knowledge.
Innovative Learning and Teaching: Experiments Across the Disciplines
This book is about teachers who care about students’ learning and are motivated to take risks and actively reflect on how to best facilitate that learning.
An Urgency of Teachers: The Word of Critical Digital Pedagogy
This collection of essays explores the authors’ work in, inquiry into, and critique of online learning, educational technology, and the trends, techniques, hopes, fears, and possibilities of digital pedagogy.
Sharing Our Knowledge: Best Practices for Supporting English-Language Learners in Schools
A collection of final papers submitted by practicing teachers who are working toward a Post-Degree Certificate in EAL Education at the University of Saskatchewan. The overall goal of the OER collection is to provide PreK-12 educators (classroom teachers, administrators, EAL coordinators, language consultants, specialists, and others) with a source of current best practices and research.
The Evolution of Affordable Content Efforts in the Higher Education Environment: Programs, Case Studies, and Examples
This book provides both inspiration and guidance for those beginning work on affordable content and evidence of the growth that has occurred in this arena over the last decade.

Comprehensive Individualized Curriculum and Instructional Design
This online textbook addresses the population of individuals with disabilities that experience complex lifelong needs across multiple areas in their lives. Drs. Sennott and Loman drafted this book (along with the help from some friends) with the hope of providing pertinent, practical, and current resources to future special educators who plan to serve individuals with complex disabilities.
DIY Open Pedagogy: Freely Sharing Teaching Resources in Psychology
A chapter by Jessica Hartnett from the book Open: The Philosophy and Practises that are Revolutionizing Education and Science on the topic of open pedagogy.
From OER to Open Pedagogy: Harnessing the Power of Open
A chapter by Robin DeRosa and Scott Robinson from the book Open: The Philosophy and Practises that are Revolutionizing Education and Science on the topic of open pedagogy.
Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science
An book edited by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robert Biswas-Diener on all topics related to open education and open science. This book shares the stories, motives, insights, and practical tips from global leaders in the open movement.
An Open Education Reader
A collection of readings on open education with commentary by David Wiley.
Open Textbook Toolkit
This toolkit is a living document designed to support university and college faculty in Ontario who would like to create their first open textbook. Key sections in this toolkit are organized in an FAQ format and include information related to stakeholders, technology, copyright, accessibility, and more general production and classroom-use workflows of an open textbook.
The Science Education Initiative Handbook
A practical guide to fostering change in university courses and faculty by embedding discipline-based education specialists within departments.
Teaching in a Digital Age
This textbook enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.

Making Open Textbooks: A Video Guide
A video series created by the Rebus Community about publishing open textbooks, with collaboration at the heart of a collective, open process of creation.
Near Future Teaching
A collection of videos featuring students and staff talking about what changes they predict, or would like to see, in teaching over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift.
Open Dialogue Series: Open education and accessibility
A video series related to digital accessibility and open education.
Open Pedagogy
An archived webinar by Open Oregon (January 2017) on the subject of open pedagogy.

Education and the Blockchain
The blockchain is considered by some people to be The Next Big Thing in higher education. For example, it is claimed that it will “reinvent higher education” (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2017), that it might “hasten the dissolution of universities as institutions” (Matthews, 2017). In this OER, we’ll learn more about these claims, why they may or may not be justified, and how we might become better equipped to analyse potential blockchain projects in higher education from a critical perspective.
Radical Digital Literacy
This resource is based on the idea that current approaches to digital literacy in most Higher Education institutions are simplistic and fail to take into account that technology is not a neutral entity. This OER provides a number of resources to read and watch with the aim of providing a springboard to discuss and share ideas of how to integrate a more radical approach to digital literacy into an undergraduate curriculum.
Serendipity in a Digital World
This resource explores the concept of Serendipity in a Digital World. Looking at the rise of algorithms, control online and how this can affect experiences of serendipity and exploration, open and closed spaces online, and how to balance, maintain, and encourage connections. The resource has been created primarily for education professionals and Masters-level students working in fields such as digital education, learning technology, digital futures, and e-learning.
Innovating with Open Knowledge
A series of resources and case studies created by the University of Edinburgh that will help you develop the knowledge and skills to find and access free content, data and research produced by the university sector.
The Future of Writing
This resource aims to encourage thought about the ways in which we take notes and how this is changing with technology. Aimed at educators, it’s goal is to try and answer the question: should we change how we teach and encourage students to write? The resource is provided as a WordPress blog which leads the learner through a series of discussions and though prompts.
Virtual Reality in Education. A future toolkit for educators?
This resource is designed to promote thinking around virtual reality (VR) in education. After exploring each theme participants are encouraged to share their thoughts, ideas, and response to key questions in the comments section. The aim of this OER is to provoke thought and discussion around VR and the potential future it has in education.

More OER Resources

For more resources on this and other subjects, visit the BC Campus website: https://open.bccampus.ca/

Even More OER Resources:

Keep your finger on the OER pulse!

BC Campus
A publicly funded organization whose "primary focus continues to be grounded in supporting the B.C. post-secondary system through learning and collaboration opportunities that advance high quality teaching and learning throughout the province." They are leading the way in Open Education advocacy.
BC Campus Discipline Directory
Search your subject area, listed alphabetically, to find Open Access resources in your subject area.
Creative Commons
A California based organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share through their release of copyright licenses available free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.
David Wiley
Co-Founder and Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, an organization dedicated to increasing student success and improving the affordability of education through the adoption of open educational resources.
eCampus Ontario
Search our collection of open textbooks and other open resources. The curated collection aligns with top subject areas in post-secondary education and features reviews from experts and educators across Canada.
Pressbooks Directory
Search your subject area and sort by various filters to find open access books in your subject area.
SPARC
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.