Although more professional in nature, open educational resources (OERs) are a growing and influential field of work and resources within education. OERs can be published in general open access institutional repositories but there are also specific repositories dedicated to collecting and indexing these materials. OERs can include lesson and curriculum plans, textbooks, tests and evaluation tools, presentations, videos, collections, and even courses and course modules. The following repositories are a good place to begin when searching for OERs and open course materials.
Research
OER Research
The OER Research repository is dedicated to research and work related to open access to education and open educational resources and their use. It is managed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and does not include OERs.
Open Educational Resources
OER Commons
OER Commons is one of the most extensive collections of open educational resources and is managed by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education.
Connexions
Connexions contains over 17,000 learning objects all available under a CC-BY licence. Connexions is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Rice University.
JorumOpen
Jorum is a free oline repository aimed at supporting UK educators in the collection and sharing of teaching materials.
Commonwealth of Learning’s Directory of Open Educational Resources
DOER provides access to indexed OERs from commonwealth countries with a focus on international sources.
MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
MERLOT includes searchable collections of OERs in a variety of digital formats. Some materials require permission before use.
