7 OER search tools
Learning outcomes
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Locate OER using OER search tools
Locating OER using OER search tools
Where to search for OER will depend on the type of material you are looking for. A broader range of OER, including videos, course materials, and simulations can be discovered through general and discipline-specific OER collections. Below are some examples of OER metafinders and OER collections for you to explore.
Note: Some repositories and collections contain items that range in user permissions from no copyright (e.g., in the public domain), to CC licences, to all rights reserved. Make it your practice to check every resource’s licence to ensure it is truly open.
OER Metafinders
There are numerous OER collections containing high quality, openly licenced educational materials that can be searched through specific tools: metafinders. These tools search across multiple repositories and aim to make the discovery of open content easier. Prominent OER metafinders include:
- OASIS – SUNY’s Openly Available Sources Integrated Search searches a curated database drawn from 80 different sources.
- The Mason OER Metafinder performs a simultaneous search across 23 different sources of open educational materials.
OER collections
There are a range of general OER collections that cover a range of resource formats and media types. They are particularly useful for finding educational materials to adapt or remix as part of a course. Some examples of these collections are as follows:
- OER Commons is an open digital library of OER of many different kinds.
- Did you know? The CAUL Digital Dexterity Champions have created a group within OER Commons to share resources? Explore the CAUL Digital Dexterity group resources.
- MERLOT is a curated collection of over 98,000 OER. The platform is maintained by California State University with partner institutions and societies around the world.
- LibreTexts is a collection of open textbooks, learning objects, and other OER. It covers a range of disciplines, including biology, business, chemistry, engineering, the humanities, mathematics, medicine, physics, and social sciences.
- Khan Academy is a collection of educational videos, mostly released under CC BY-NC-SA licences.
Discipline-specific OER collections
There are also a range of discipline-specific OER collections and repositories with particular subject strengths. Some examples include:
- AMSER (Applied Math & Science Educational Repository) is a portal of educational resources and services free for anyone to use, but not necessarily openly licenced – check the “Rights” field of licence terms.
- COERLL (Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning, University of Texas at Austin) produces and disseminates OER such as online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, and more.
- CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments) is an open and collaborative space for faculty and libr