Research Guides: Open Educational Resources @MJC: Find OER

Find OER

How can I find OER?

Leaders in open education discuss the growing number of platforms available for locating OER and their favorite starting points, including OER Commons and the Open Textbook Library. It's also possible to filter by license type (or usage rights) to search for OER on commonly used search engines, such as Google, YouTube, and Flickr.

See our list of OER Repositories below for more ways to find OER.

"How Can I Find OER?" by The Council of Chief State School Officers CC BY 4.0, Music by Lahaina by Blue Dot Sessions: CC BY NC 4.0.

Tips for Finding OER

There are a lot of OER out there. It takes time and persistence to find the ones that best fit you and your students' academic and research needs. This is not an exhaustive list of available OER content.
Instead of focusing on the textbook that you want to replace, focus on what you want your students to know or do.
Your OER Librarian, Iris Carroll, or Shirley Miranda can help you locate materials for your course.

Find OER with the License You Need

When you search for an OER, be sure to examine the CC license to make sure it allows the use you see fit.

OER Repositories

This is by no means an exhaustive list of OER repositories. If you find one you like, please send it to Iris Carroll so that I can add it.

General Repositories

ASCCC Open Educational Resources by Discipline Curated lists from the Open Educational Resources Initiative of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
ASCCC - CSU General Educational Requirements, C-ID, and Available OER This document is intended to serve as a resource for California community college (CCC) faculty and colleges that are seeking to develop entire degree pathways that use no-cost OER in lieu of commercial texts. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Courses are specified by C-ID designation, where available.
MERLOT The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder webpages, together with associated comments, and bookmark collections, all intended to enhance the teaching experience of using a learning material. All of these items have been contributed by the MERLOT member community, who have either authored the materials themselves, or who have discovered the materials, found them useful, and wished to share their enthusiasm for the materials with others in the teaching and learning community. All the materials in MERLOT are reviewed for suitability for retention in the collection. Many undergo the more extensive "peer review" for which MERLOT is famous. MERLOT presents annual awards for various categories of materials added to or used in the collection. As described in Material Link Checking and Removal, all material URL's in the collection are reviewed frequently for sustainability.
Workforce Development in the MERLOT Collection Brought to you by Cool4Ed.
OER Commons Explore the OER Commons full collection of OER. You can also create and remix using the Open Author tool, and collaborate with colleagues.
OASIS: Openly Available Sources Integrated Search OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search) is a search tool recently developed and launched by SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library that works like a library catalog. It provides an easy-to-use search interface and includes a highly-selective collection of textbooks, courses, interactive simulations, audiobooks, learning objects, and more. There are over 150,000 items available coming from 52 different sources like Open NYS, CUNY, Open Textbooks, OER Services, and SUNY. Like a library catalog, you can search by title or you can browse resource categories. You can also refine your search by the source, license, and whether or not the resource has been reviewed.
B.C. Open Collection by BCcampus The B.C. Open Collection is a curated selection of open educational resources (OER). All materials are openly licensed. This means they are free to use, customize, and share. The collection includes courses and textbooks.
Open Washington Large OER resource repository managed by Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.
MOM: Mason OER Metafinder Real-time federated search for OER content. The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources. Unlike other OER discovery sites (e.g, OER Commons, OASIS, MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.) with our Metafinder you aren’t searching a database that we built.

Textbook Repositories

LibreTexts The LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society.
OpenStax Peer-reviewed collection of open textbooks. You can access faculty-only materials by creating a free OpenStax account. The online version of OpenStax books are always kept up-to-date and are freely available.
Open Textbook Library The OTL provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
Open Textbooks / OER Commons ISKME's digital librarians have curated collections of Open Textbooks and full courses to help leverage OER in your classroom. Whether you are looking for more affordable options for your students, or dynamic content to inspire your own teaching and learning practice, this hub, organized by discipline and provider will help you discover the resources you need at your fingertips.
MERLOT Collection: Open (Access) Textbooks Open textbooks suitable for General Ed. and College Lower Division courses in all subjects from MERLOT.
ZTC Textbooks: College of the Canyons Permission is not needed for downloading or editing these textbook files.
GALILEO Open Learning Materials GALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.
BC Campus: OpenED - Textbook Collection Find textbooks and course materials.
Milne Open Textbooks Formerly known as Open SUNY Textbooks, Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo manages and maintains Milne Open Textbooks, a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.
Cool4Ed California Open Online Library for Education is a collaboration of CSU, UC, and CCC

Course Materials

Skills Commons SkillsCommons is a free and open online library with learning materials and program support materials for job-driven workforce development. Created by the US Dept. of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training program (TAACCCT).
Open Oregon Course materials from Open Oregon that include links to the material and author contact information if you want to consult with your discipline peers.
Open Course Library The Open Course Library is a collection of expertly developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – in 81 high-enrollment college courses, providing faculty with a high-quality, affordable option that will cost students no more than $30 for textbooks. All materials are shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license unless otherwise noted. Open Course Library is an initiative of the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges.
MIT Open Courseware MIT Open Courseware is a free and open collection of material from thousands of MIT courses, covering the entire MIT curriculum.

Simulations and Animation

PhET Free online physics, chemistry, math, earth science, and biology simulations. PhET provides fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena for free. PhET simulations enable students to make connections between real-life phenomena and the underlying science, deepening their understanding and appreciation of the physical world. All PhET simulations are freely available from the PhET website and are easy to use and incorporate into the classroom. They are written in Java and Flash, and can be run using a standard web browser as long as Flash and Java are installed. The PhET Interactive Simulations are distributed under the Creative Commons-Attribution 3.0 license and the Creative Commons GNU General Public License. Here’s a list of PhET simulations.
STEM Resource Finder Interactive STEM activities from Concord Consortium. Results filtered for higher education.
LabXchange A free online platform for science education from Harvard University covering many different subject areas.
MERLOT Virtual Labs Hub Curated list of virtual labs for multiple disciplines.

Photos, Images, Audio, and Video

ASCCC: Free and Open Images Resources for finding openly-licensed images from ASCCC.
Encyclopedia of Life The Encyclopedia of Life is an online collaborative encyclopedia providing global access to knowledge about biological life on earth. The encyclopedia is filled with images that you can filter by Creative Commons license.
Flickr Use the search filter to find works licensed under Creative Commons.
Google Advanced Image Search Be sure to narrow your search by selecting Usage Rights and then Creative Commons Licenses.
Legal Music for Videos Webpage created by Creative Commons that lists several sites you can use to find music that is licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
The Noun Project "Professionally curated, art-quality photos that celebrate diversity." CC BY NC ND
Openverse Explore over 600 million creative works that are offered under a Creative Commons license or are in the Public Domain. Includes free stock photos, images, and audio.
Pexels Free stock photos, royalty free images and videos. All content can be downloaded, modified, and used for free. Learn more about the Pexels' license.
Pixabay Over 2.7 million+ high-quality stock images, videos, and music. This content is free and royalty free and no attribution is required. Learn more about the Pixabay license.
Vimeo Creative Commons licensed video.
YouTube Once you run your search, be sure to select Filters. Under Features, select Creative Commons.

OER by Discipline

If you're looking for OER for your specific discipline, check out our OER Discipline pages.