Discover OERs with the Library
Celebrate Open Education Week with the Van Pelt and Opie Library by participating in our weeklong discussion. Today, the Library wants to know: What’s preventing you from using Open Educational materials in the classroom? Tell us your thoughts, share the discussion, and follow along in the OE Week discussion section of the Library’s Open Educational Resources (OER) page.
If one roadblock to utilizing OERs is knowing where to look, you’re in luck! The Library is available for consultations on locating OERs that will work for your courses — and we have a few tips for beginning the search. The Open Textbook Library (OTL) is a great place to start. Born out of the University of Minnesota in 2012 and supported by the Open Education Network, the OTL offers 999 open textbooks that may be freely used and adapted. Because the Van Pelt and Opie Library is an allied member of the Open Education Network, instructors are able to review every work in the OTL in order to help the academic community evaluate the quality of the materials.
Another great source for finding OERs is OASIS: Openly Available Sources Integrated Search, developed at SUNY Genesio’s Milne Library. This database indexes open content from over 100 sources, including the OTL, allowing users to search through over 400,000 records. A user-friendly interface enables simple searches using keywords, by type of OERs (textbooks, modules, podcasts, etc.) or by subject.
For more information on OTL and OASIS and for a list of additional sources of OERs, check out the Library’s OER page. To schedule a consultation with a librarian to discuss OERs for your classroom, email library@mtu.edu or submit a consultation request form.