Open Educational Resources: A Guide for Teachers and Professors
For educators who have spent years navigating the frustrating landscape of commercial educational publishing — dealing with expensive textbooks, restrictive copyright, and materials that cannot be adapted to specific classroom needs — the rise of open educational resources (OER) represents a genuine paradigm shift. This guide will help teachers and professors at every level understand how to find, evaluate, and effectively use OER in their classrooms.
What Exactly Are Open Educational Resources?
Open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research materials released under licenses that allow anyone to freely use, share, and adapt them. The UNESCO definition emphasizes three core characteristics: they reside in the public domain or carry open licensing, they can be retained (downloaded and kept), reused (used in your classroom), revised (adapted), remixed (combined with other materials), and redistributed (shared with others).
OER span an enormous range of material types: textbooks, lecture notes, course syllabi, videos, simulations, assessments, and more. The ecosystem has grown dramatically in recent years, with high-quality materials now available for nearly every subject at every educational level.
Where to Find Quality OER
The proliferation of OER repositories can feel overwhelming to educators just beginning to explore this space. Here are the most valuable sources organized by type:
- OpenStax: Peer-reviewed textbooks for college-level courses in STEM, humanities, and social sciences, used by millions of students worldwide
- MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching): A curated repository of peer-reviewed OER across disciplines
- OER Commons: A large digital public library of OER with strong search and filtering capabilities
- MIT OpenCourseWare: Course materials from MIT's curriculum, including syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, and exams
- Khan Academy: Video-based instruction covering K-12 subjects and introductory college courses
Evaluating OER Quality
Not all OER is created equal. As with any teaching material, quality varies significantly. When evaluating OER for classroom use, consider several dimensions: accuracy of content, pedagogical effectiveness, accessibility for diverse learners, currency (when was it last updated), and alignment with your specific learning objectives.
The COUP Framework provides a systematic approach: consider the Cost savings, outcomes data where available, Use potential (how easily can it be adopted or adapted), and Perceptions (how faculty, students, and administrators view the materials).
Adapting OER for Your Classroom
One of the most powerful features of open licensing is the ability to adapt materials. Rather than being constrained by a publisher's editorial choices, you can customize OER to reflect your pedagogical approach, your institution's context, your students' backgrounds, and the most current developments in your field.
Practical adaptation might include: reordering chapters to match your course sequence, adding local case studies or examples that resonate with your students, updating statistics and references to more recent sources, adding discussion questions or exercises tailored to your course goals, and removing sections not relevant to your curriculum.
Legal Considerations and Attribution
Understanding the licensing terms of OER is essential. Most OER use Creative Commons licenses, which come in several variants. The most permissive (CC BY) requires only attribution. Others may prohibit commercial use (CC BY-NC), require adaptations to carry the same license (CC BY-SA), or prohibit adaptations entirely (CC BY-ND). Always check the specific license and comply with its terms when using and adapting materials.
Proper attribution is both a legal requirement and an academic value. When using OER, acknowledge the original authors clearly, include a link to the original source, and specify the license under which the material is shared.
Getting Started
The best way to begin with OER is to start small. Replace one expensive textbook with a quality open alternative, or supplement your existing course with a few OER videos or simulations. As you experience the benefits firsthand — both the cost savings for your students and the pedagogical flexibility for yourself — you will likely find yourself wanting to expand your OER use.
Visit our resources section for a curated collection of OER organized by subject area, or explore our blog for more articles on digital education and open learning.