Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials—including textbooks, streaming video, test banks, podcasts, and modules—that are openly licensed and freely available for anyone to use and share. Many are high-quality and peer-reviewed resources that you can modify and repurpose to meet your specific course learning objectives and student needs. Using OER ensures that all students have access to the materials they need to succeed, improves accessibility for students with perceptual disabilities, and enables equal or improved learning outcomes.

Features of Course Material Options

Features	Open Educational Resources	Library Licensed Content	Electronic Commercial Textbooks
Cost to Students
Includes Ancillary Materials (lecture slides, question banks)
Requires Accessing Third Party Platform
Ability to Download Material
Can be Shared
Perpetual Access
Ability to Link to Resources through ARES or CourseLink

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For support on getting started with OER, contact Open Educational Resources Support.

Additional Resources

Tools
	ARES Course Reserve System OER Evaluation Checklist University of Guelph Open Books Publishing Software (Pressbooks)
Use Cases
	For Fall 2020, you may want to focus on simply adopting OER for your classroom by:  Replacing traditional readings with a selection of openly licensed modules or videos Adopting an open textbook instead of a commercial electronic textbook   Longer term, you may be interested in adapting or creating OER for your classroom by:  Getting students to create test questions as part of an assessment of comprehension Getting students to create bite-sized learning objects for topics they find challenging Getting students to contribute to sections of an open textbook
Resources
	What are Creative Commons Licenses? OER are often licensed under a Creative Commons (CC) licence. CC licences indicate the ways in which the OER is permitted to be used and re-used. Finding and Using OER in the Classroom Teaching Series: Handout for Business and Social Sciences Resources Business and Social Sciences - Video recording Handout for Sciences Resources The Sciences - Video recording Handout for Arts and Humanities Resources Arts and Humanities - Video recording Instructor Guide to Using Ares - The Ares Course Reserve system can be used to facilitate access to OER instead of, or in addition to, traditional course materials. Ares can be fully integrated with CourseLink so that student access is seamless. Students’ Perceptions and Outcomes from Using Open Digital and Open Print Textbooks Evaluating the effectiveness of the open-access ChemWiki resource as a replacement for traditional general chemistry textbooks