Library Guides: Open Educational Resources: OER resources

There are many examples of educational resources which are licensed as Open Educational Resources. There is no one website to go to that describes all the available and it can be daunting to start looking for material online. The links on this guide are examples of some of the more well-known OER programs or platforms.

Link through to examples of OER Resources

And watch the videos at the end of this page for tips on how to search for OERs.

Courses and online learning

Academic Earth
Academic Earth was launched on the premise that everyone deserves access to a world-class education. Search the collection of curated lists of online courses by authoring institution or subject.
coursera
Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organisations to offer courses online.
edX
Founded by Harvard University and MIT, edX is an online learning destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere.
MERLOT
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. There is an option to search the curated collections - https://www.oercommons.org/curated-collections
OpenLearn
Produced by The Open University, a world leader in open and distance learning, all OpenLearn courses are free to study. There are nearly 1000 free courses across eight different subject areas.
openmichigan
Welcome to our collection of open educational resources (OER) from University of Michigan. Access a range of course materials, videos, lectures, student work and more. Nearly all of the content here is openly licensed for reuse under Creative Commons.

Images

Creative Commons Image search
search.creativecommons.org offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organisations.
flickr
Photograph repository. Search on a topic, refine to a particular licence, and check the data attached to the image.
Google Image Search
Use the 'Google Advanced Search' to search for images.
openclipart
Openclipart may be used for any purpose, including unlimited commercial productions, as royalty-free clipart, for schools, churches, commercial and non-commercial reasons. The Openclipart community believes that clipart should be removed of as many restrictions as humanly possible so that the clipart may spread as far and wide as un-imaginable.
Open Photo Project
The Open Photo Project is a photo sharing platform. Contributors have offered their images free of charge under terms of Creative Commons licensing. License terms and conditions vary from image to image.
pikabay
Royalty free stock photos and videos shared by our generous community.
Wikimedia Commons: Images
Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Find images by topic or subject.

Image Collections

Biodiversity Heritage Library (flickr)
Inspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge. The Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community.
CSIRO science image
Scienceimage is an image library specialising in science and nature images. It is presented by CSIRO, Australia's major science research organisation. All images are free to download under a Creative Commons license.
NASA Image Galleries
Open-i: Biomedical image search engine
Open-i service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections.

Music & audio

Soundcloud
A social sound platform for creating and sharing music and sounds. To search for items that allow reuse, after a search, filter the search results by "To share".,
Wikimedia commons: Audio files
Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Find audio material by topic or subject.
Jamendo
Jamendo is all about connecting musicians and music lovers from all over the world. Creative Commons brought an alternative to the automatic “all-rights reserved” copyright, eventually leading a small group of people in Luxembourg to found in 2004 the pioneering Jamendo website, the first platform allowing to legally share music for free.
ccMixter
Thousands of hours of free music - all you have to do is give credit to the musicians. Licence information on the website.

PhET Interactive Simulations
Interactive simulations for science and math
Resource Repository - Australian Council of Deans of Science
This repository includes teaching and assessment resources developed across Faculties of Science, particularly those to support online learning. All resources have been curated by experts based on set criteria.
WISC-Online
As a non-profit serving the private and public sectors, our products range from corporate learning solutions to free, publicly accessible instructional programs. Our award-winning learning objects have been providing student success and homework help for over a decade.

Simulations

Videos

Australia's Science Channel
Australia’s Science Channel is Australia’s first free and open publishing platform for science stories. On Australia’s Science Channel you’ll find compelling videos, articles, podcasts, news and events from our publishing partners and Australia’s Science Channel’s contributing editors. We work with leading minds, universities from around Australia, organisations and institutions to provide compelling science stories for everyone to watch, read, listen and share thoughts on what’s happening in science.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom.
Ted Talks
TED talks are usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). covering almost all topics, from science to business to global issues.
Vimeo
Browse the Creative Commons licensed videos on Vimeo. Learn about what you can and can't do with other people’s videos on Vimeo to help you share, rework and reuse legally.
Wikimedia Commons: Videos
Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Find videos by topic or subject.
YouTube
Enter your search terms, then use the filters to search for Creative Common licensed videos.

Library Guides

Open Educational Resources: OER resources

Courses and online learning

Images

Image Collections

Music & audio

Simulations

Videos

Searching OER Using Google's Advanced Search

How can I find OER?

How to Find Creative Commons Videos on YouTube