Finding OER

Finding OER

Open Educational Resources (OER) can be accessed in a multitude of ways, mainly by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges' (ASCCC) Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI) webpage, as well as online OER repositories.

ASCCC OERI

The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges Open Educational Resources Intiative has curated OER Collections for the California Community Colleges, organized by discipline, CSU general education requirements, Transfer Model Curricula, and C-ID are available, as well as a summary of OER gaps. The OERI’s curated collections are developed by the OERI Discipline Leads. Access ASCCC OERI Supported Resources for an overview of the OER that has been supported by the OERI, as well as an overview of the OER that is presently being developed.

• OER by California State University General Education
• OER by the California General Education Transfer Curriculum (Cal-GETC)
• OER by Transfer Model Curriculum

OERI provides curated OER lists by Discipline. Here it is collated by De Anza academic division. These are not exhaustive lists, but are resources chosen by ASCCC to be of high quality. This list is updated monthly.

You can browse by course if you know its C-ID on their website or use the accordion below to find your discipline.

Canvas Course Shell

The Online Education Initiative has put together multiple course shells in Canvas using OpenStax. These courses align with the OEI rubric (sound design and fully accessible) and have already been set up in Modules using OpenStax content. Faculty can import the content into their own course shell and then add elements for substantive interaction and additional assignments/assessments.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), which allows you to freely share, copy, distribute and transmit the work. 

To find these adoptable courses:

• Go to the Canvas Commons
• In the search box at the top, enter “CVC-OEI Adoptable”

Repositories & Platforms

There is a huge array of repositories available across the internet featuring different styles of OER, ranging from textbooks, to homework systems, to ancilliary instructional material. Regional, academic, and business provide OER Repositories. Here's a list in alphabetical order.

Platforms

Platforms are where comprehensive OER projects live. These platform

• LibreTexts - an adaptable platform offering structured OER and ancillary resources. Has collaboration functionality, remix and synthesis, and ADAPT, LibreTexts' homework system (has Canvas integration).
• OpenStax - One of the largest publishers of OER originating from Rice University. Also offers customized assignments and interactive materials.
• Pressbooks - Create & adapt books using Pressbooks' adapt functionality. Browse over 7,000 resources ranging from textbooks to ancillary material.

Repositories

• Mason OER Metafinder - not a repository, but a federated metadata search tool that searches 22 different OER Sources, such as MERLOT, OER COmmons, JSTOR Open Access Books.
• OER Commons - A larger repository encompassing OER from different sources (Pressbooks, OTL) and educational institutions (Stanford, OER Africa).
• Canvas Commons - Resources that can be imported directly into your Canvas shell. Requires to  be logged into Canvas.
• College of the Canyon's OER Textbooks Collection - Sorted by discipline and course, CotC offers curated textbooks.
• California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4Ed) - embedded in MERLOT and SKillsCommons, COOL4Ed has over 50 textbooks available and suggestions from actual instructors on how to use OER in your courses
• MERLOT - Associated with SkillsCommons, MERLOT has over 100,000 resources to choose from. View via discipline to sort through the huge array of resources more efficiently.
• OpenOregon - A regional repository housing over 500 educational resources, ranging from textbooks to reading list, to workbooks. Many are designed in Google's doc-book format.
• SkillsCommons - Workforce retraining and development resources.
• State University of New York (SUNY) - Over 120 OER textbooks ranging from College Success, Accounting, Biology, Statistics, Business Management, and U.S History.
• University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library (OTL) - Supported by the Open Educational Network, OTL offers over 1,500 textbooks and educational resources across dozens of disciplines.