4.1 Finding OER: exploring tools and platforms
Sometimes it can be difficult to find OER relevant to your needs. Fortunately, there are many platforms and tools available that can be used to look for OER or where you can upload your own OER. You'll explore some of the most popular platforms and tools in the next activity.
Activity: Exploring OER tools and platforms
Estimated study time: 30 minutes
- Visit at least three of the sites listed below and look for resources that are relevant to your own interests or work. Make a note of any resources that seem particularly useful, making sure to record the link for that resource.
- For each site you visit, also note how easy the site is to use and any tips for making your search more effective.
|
Platform |
Purpose |
Website |
|
Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) |
MERLOT offers curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners, and researchers. You can also develop or develop your work on this platform without any cost |
|
|
Internet Archive |
Internet Archive provides free access to webpages, books, audio, video, images, software programs, etc. at no cost. You can also upload your media. |
|
|
OERCommons |
This is a freely accessible digital library and network platform that allows people to search, discover or author open educational resources. |
|
|
OERTX |
OERTX Repository is a public digital library of open educational resources for higher education. Users can search collections, create resources and collaborate. |
https://oertx.highered.texas.gov/ |
Openaverse |
Openverse is an open-source search engine for more than 700 million open content works. It searches Creative Commons-licensed and public domain content, especially images and audio from many different sources. |
|
|
OERu |
OERu offers free online courses for students worldwide, and also provides affordable ways for learners to gain academic credit towards qualifications from recognised institutions. |
|
|
Zenodo |
Zenodo is an open repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and allows researchers to deposit research papers, data sets, research software, reports, and any other research-related digital artefacts free of cost. |
|
|
SSRN |
SSRN is an open repository for preprints for the dissemination of scholarly research work in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences, among others. |
|
|
OpenLearn |
OpenLearn is the UK's Open University's open content platform, featuring over 1,000 free online courses |
|
|
OAsis |
OAsis is an open-access repository for learning resources and publications with over 5,000 entries. |
|
|
Global Academy of Open Educational Resources Publication |
The Global Academy is an open publication hub for global scholars to publish their work at no cost |
https://sites.google.com/view/gfte/gfte-academy-of-open-education-resources-publications?authuser=0 |
|
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) |
The DOAJ is a website that hosts a community-curated list of open-access journals |
|
|
Writing Commons |
Writing Commons is a peer-reviewed open education resource for college-level writers |
|
|
Wikibooks |
Wikibooks is an open authoring platform where you can create free content digital textbooks and annotated texts that anyone can edit |
https://textbook.wikipedia.org/ |
|
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s OpenCourseWare |
This is an initiative of MIT which publishes all of MIT’s educational content, freely and openly available, to anyone, anywhere |
|
|
Free Music Archive |
Free Music Archive is an online repository of royalty-free music. |
|
|
OpenDOAR |
OpenDOAR provides a quality-assured listing of open-access repositories around the world. |
https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/ |
|
Skills Commons |
Skills Commons offers open educational services and resources enabling individuals, communities, educational institutions, organizations, and businesses to prepare people for successful employment in the 21st Century. |
|
|
Digital Public Library of America |
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. |
|
|
PLOS |
PLOS publishes open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. |
|
|
African Virtual University (AVU) OER |
The African Virtual University undertakes collaborative work to develop the professional competencies and skills of stakeholders within African higher education institutions so that they can implement OER practices to improve the quality of teaching and learning. |
https://www.oerafrica.org/content/african-virtual-university-avu-oer |
|
National Science Digital Library |
The National Science Digital Library provides high-quality online educational resources for teaching and learning in science education at all levels. |
|
|
Khan Academy |
Khan Academy offers free video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, including mathematics, sciences, literature, US history, and computer science. |
|
|
Philanthropy University |
Philanthropy University is a free platform for social change featuring practical courses and knowledge-sharing communities. |
|
|
OpenStax |
OpenStax offers peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks, which are available in free digital formats and for a low cost in print. |
|
|
Open Textbook Library |
Open Textbook Library provides lists of open textbooks in a range of disciplines, accompanied by reviews from staff at academic institutions. |
|
|
Saylor Academy |
Saylor Academy offers over 100 full-length free and open online courses. |
|
|
Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) |
TESSA offers free OER in multiple languages, supporting national curricula and providing examples of participatory pedagogy. |
https://www.tessafrica.net/tessa-oer |
|
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) |
DOAB indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open-access books. |
|
|
The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) |
MOM is intended to help users find OER on multiple repositories. |
|
|
The Open Video Project |
The Open Video Project is a collection of digital videos on a variety of topics. |
|
|
Directory of Open Educational Resources |
Director of Open Educational Resources gives access to OER collections provided by Commonwealth educational institutions. |
http://doer.col.org/ |
|
Wikimedia Commons |
Wikimedia Commons is a media repository of free-to-use images, sounds, videos, and other media. |
https://commons.wikipedia.org/ |
|
Jorum (JISC) |
Jorum offers learning and research resources across the higher education, further education, and skills sectors. |
https://www.jisc.ac.uk/content/resources |
|
Pixabay |
Pixabay is a royalty-free stock media website. It is used for sharing photos, illustrations, vector graphics, film footage, music and sound effects, etc |
|
|
Unsplash |
Unsplash offers free high-resolution images. |
|
|
Galileo – Open Learning Materials |
Galileo provides access to OER including open textbooks |
|
|
Libretexts |
Libretexts is an online OER textbook project, covering subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Geosciences, etc |
https://chem.libretexts.org/ |
|
YouTube |
YouTube offers the facility to filter and search for Creative Commons-licensed video. |
https://www.youtube.com/ |
|
OpenLearn Create |
OpenLearn Create offers free and open courses for online and offline use and allows users to create, publish, and share their free courses |
http://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/ |
|
ccMixter |
ccMixter is a global community of cooperative musicians that promotes remix culture and makes samples, remixes, and a cappella tracks |
|
|
New World Encyclopedia |
New World Encyclopedia is a wiki-based encyclopedia that contains carefully selected articles that are rewritten and supervised by a team of editors with academic and literary qualifications |
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/ |
|
WikiEducator |
WikiEducator is a community of educators who believe passionately that learning materials should be free and open to all. |
https://www.wikieducator.org/ |
|
Search Creative Commons |
Search for OERs using this facility. |
https://search.creativecommons.org/ |
|
Digital Green Community Videos |
Digital Green provides Indian (locally relevant community) videos in more than 50 languages on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Health, and Horticulture. |
https://solutions.digitalgreen.org/videos/library/ |
|
Curriki |
Curriki is an online, free, open education service that provides open educational resources primarily in support of K-12 education. |
https://www.curriki.org/ |
|
Google Sites |
Google sites offers the facility to create and publish resources for free. |
https://sites.google.com/new |
|
GitBook |
GitBook is an online platform for creating and hosting books. |
www.gitbook.com |
|
Wikiversity |
Wikiversity is a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities |
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page |