Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are free to access, adapt, and share thanks to open licenses that explicitly permit retention, reuse, revision, remixing, and redistribution —the “5 Rs”. 
 Why Use OER? 
 
 
 Cost savings for students by replacing high-priced textbooks with free alternatives. 
 
 Pedagogical freedom for instructors to customize, localize, and update materials. 
 
 Equitable access for learners worldwide, removing paywalls and permission barriers. 
 
 Major OER Platforms & Repositories 
 
 
 
 Platform 
 Primary Focus 
 Key Features 
 License Scope 
 
 
 
 
 MERLOT 
 Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning & Online Teaching 
 100,000+ peer-reviewed learning objects across disciplines; member ratings and comments 
 Varies; most under Creative Commons 
 
 
 MIT OpenCourseWare 
 Full course content from MIT (syllabi, lectures, assessments) 
 2,600+ courses; high-quality STEM & humanities materials; translated into multiple languages 
 CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
 
 
 OER Commons 
 Aggregator of lesson plans, textbooks, simulations, etc. 
 Advanced search, alignment to curricula, authoring & remix tools, hubs for institutions 
 Predominantly CC licenses 
 
 
 Open Textbook Library 
 Peer-reviewed open textbooks 
 1,400+ titles; faculty reviews; PDF & editable formats 
 CC BY or similar 
 
 
 Wikimedia Commons 
 95+ million media files (images, audio, video) 
 Free cultural & educational media; integrates with Wikipedia; category and quality ratings 
 CC BY, CC BY-SA, or public domain 
 
 
 OpenStax 
 High-quality college textbooks 
 Professionally developed textbooks with ancillaries; print copies at low cost 
 CC BY 4.0 
 
 
 LibreTexts 
 Dynamic, modular textbooks & homework systems 
 400+ books in STEM, social sciences, humanities; Remix tool; integration with LMS 
 CC BY-NC-SA (default) 
 
 
 Teaching Commons 
 Aggregated scholarly teaching materials from university repositories 
 Faculty-authored syllabi, modules, multimedia 
 Varies; mostly CC licenses 
 
 
 Open Case Studies 
 Real-world case studies (public policy, health, environment) 
 Editable case repositories; interdisciplinary 
 CC BY 
 
 
 
 Creating & Sharing Your Own OER 
 
 Author in open formats (Markdown, HTML, Pressbooks . 
 Apply a suitable CC license (e.g., CC BY for maximal reuse). 
 Deposit in a visible repository ( BI Research Repository , OER Commons, MERLOT). 
 Supply editable source files (e.g., .docx, .xml) to enable remixing.