Finding Open Educational Resources (OER) for the courses you teach can be as simple as conducting a single search -- or it can be an adventure in sleuthing. Make a copy of the OER Beginner's Search Worksheet to help you through the process!
Asking for Help
If you would like personalized help finding OER resources for your course, please contact your OER Coordinator Kristin Whitman at kristin.whitman@oit.edu.
Let Someone Else Do the Work
Before you get started, check whether anybody is already creating lists of OER on your subject! There's no harm in Googling "OER + Your Discipline."
We recommend Tacoma Community College's OER by Subject guides. Choose a subject, then click into the "OER starting points" tab to see the collected OER recommendations.
Search Open Textbooks
Try searching these open textbook repositories in this order - we've listed smaller collections of high-quality OER at the top of the list in hope you'll find a great textbook fast!
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OpenStax
Do you teach an introductory-level course? OpenStax has high quality open peer-reviewed textbooks at the 101 level, including ancillary materials and instructor and student resources.
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Open Textbook Library
This curated collection includes hundreds of complete, open, college-level textbooks. Includes reviews. Faculty members from anywhere, including UAA, can submit reviews of the texts. By Univ. of Minnesota. Content is searched within both the OASIS and Mason metafinders as well.
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BC Campus OpenEd Textbook Directory
Directory of 117 hand-picked open textbooks, many reviewed by British Columbia faculty. Some include supplementary materials. Content is searched within both the OASIS and Mason metafinders as well.
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Pressbooks Directory
Pressbooks is a publishing platform where many OER books are published. This link will allow you to search cataloged Pressbooks made discoverable by their publishing institutions. Careful, some entries are derivatives of other existing open textbooks!
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LibreTexts
An open online platform containing both open textbooks, and full open courses. LibreText is also a software platform offering an OER Remixer to help instructors build custom collections of OER.
Search All Types of Open Learning Materials
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OpenOregon's Guide to Finding OER
Looking for open images or ancillary material such as slides or test banks? This information may help.
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OER Commons
A search engine that covers OER for higher education as well as K-12. Be sure to use the filter menu on the results page to narrow to the types of material you're interested in.
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Mason OER Metafinder
Simultaneously search a number of OER and open access repositories with this single search box from George Mason University. An excellent place to see a wide variety of types of resources. Allows for searching full records for terms, whereas OASIS does not.
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OASIS OER Metafinder
Simultaneously search many OER and open access repositories with this metafinder from SUNY. An excellent place to see a wide variety of types of resources.
