Are you considering incorporating open resources into your course to save students money and improve teaching and learning? First on this page, you will find tips for finding Open Educational Resources for your classes.
Once you've found the right resource, you may want to make modifications to suit your particular class! Look below for a helpful guide for modifying Open Textbooks and OER, including examples from several common formats.
Step one: Set aside time.
Searching for these materials takes time and persistence, just like research!
Step two: take a look to see if someone else has created a similar, complete OER course or textbook.
See the "Complete Courses" and "Complete Textbooks" sections of the "Find" tab.
Example: Go to the Open Textbook Library and browse their open business texts.
Step three: Get cozy with your learning objectives.
Instead of focusing on the textbook that you would like to replace, focus on what you would like students to know or be able to do. You will likely need to search for several materials to address different topics or components of your complete class.
Example: instead of searching for “biology” materials, search for “cell structure” or “DNA” or “evolution” materials.
Step four: Use Google “Advanced Search” to search for open resources.
Step five: Search within some of the specific OER repositories/OER search engines:
See the "Find" tab for a list.
*OER Pro Tip* Use the browsing tools that the repository or search engine presents to you! Don’t rely solely on keyword searching.
Step six: Look for library materials like ebooks, articles and streaming videos to fill in gaps.
Visit the library's homepage to search our collection.
Step seven: Not finding what you’re looking for? Ask your librarian.
We are happy to help or refer you! Send an e-mail to your subject liason.
Step seven: Consider creating and sharing your own OER.
See the "Create" tab.
Open Learn has a helpful open, modular online course "Creating Open Educational Resources"
More advice on searching for OER?
Check out this 60 minute webinar “Finding and Selecting High Quality OER”:
The guide above from the Open Textbook Network gives five detailed steps for identifying and selecting an Open Textbook that can be modified for your class. The steps included in this guide include the following:
They include specific information for working with five very common types of OER:
We highly recommend this guide for those who want to customize their own Open Textbook for a course!
Most Open Textbook and OER packets are free to read online. What about students who want a print copy?
Some Open Textbook publishers have print-on-demand availability. Those include OpenStax College and Orange Grove Textbooks, among others.
This guide is adapted from the excellent resources at the University of Pittsburgh, Portland Community College, Virginia Tech, and UMass Amherst Libraries.
This content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
