Subject/Research Guides: Open Education Resources (OER): Finding OER

Searching for OER

Finding the right Open Educational Resource (OER) is the most challenging part of using OERs in the classroom. The resources listed on this page can help you find an OER in your subject area. The bad news: you may not find an exact match. The good news: OERs are usually shared in such a way that you’ll be able to edit the OER to better meet your student needs. If licensed to allow derivatives, you will be able to mix, match, and customize multiple OERs like an open course pack.

OER Commons
OER Commons is a dynamic digital library and network. Explore open education resources and join our network of educators dedicated to curriculum improvement.
Mason OER Metafinder
A federated search of 15 open educational resource sites. From George Mason University.
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.
Oasis
OASIS is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier by searching multiple sources for OER and other open content at once. OASIS currently searches for open content from 79 different sources and contains approximately 330,000 records.

Below are a few resources for specific types of format. For a longer and more complete listing, visit the list maintained by Open Washington.

Open Washington OER List

Library of Congress Digital Collections
Satisfy your curiosity by exploring the LOC collections including audio recordings, books, videos, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, notated music, periodicals, photos, prints, and drawings. From the Lincoln papers to Comic Book art, and anything in-between...
Creative Commons Images
Flickr CC Collection
Noun Project
Icons
Google Images
Use the tools option to filter for images with Creative Commons licenses.

Google Images search for CC images

Search using Google

Other than using repositories to search for OER, you can also use Google to locate bookmarked guides. Many academic libraries are working with faculty to locate OER, and you can take advantage of these listed resources.

Using Google, type is keywords such as "OER by subject" or "OER by discipline" and add a keyword for your subject of interest.

You can also use Google Advanced Search to conduct a search for content openly licensed. This may return duplicates, but you may find some additional OER that was not indexed in the repositories. Google Advanced Search will allow you to designate the license type of the content and also the format, such as a PDF or Presentation.

Watch this brief video on how to use Google Advanced to locate OER. Created by D'Arcy Hutchings for UAA/APU Consortium Library (ConsortiumLibrary.org) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)