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Listen to my interview with Karen Vaites (transcript):
Sponsored by Pear Deck and Chill Expeditions

For as long as the internet has been around, teachers have been able to find free resources online. But while it's great to not have to pay for things, free instructional materials don't exactly come without problems.

One major concern is quality. When a resource is free, it's often hard to tell whether it was created by someone with a solid education background or if it's going to be really effective in teaching what you want to teach. It's also quite possible that the resource wasn't properly proofread and contains errors both in mechanics and in content.

Another issue is copyright. Just because a resource can be downloaded without a fee doesn't mean you have permission to use or share it. Digital resources, including those that cost money, can easily be distributed online with just a few clicks, and once a stolen resource is "out there," it can be difficult to get it taken down.

Finally, there's the problem of cohesiveness. Grabbing one-off materials from various sources can help you satisfy immediate instructional needs, and variety is a good thing, but if you're looking for something more robust, more sustainable, you'll have a harder time finding it without paying for it.

With these problems in mind, I was skeptical when I first heard about the #GoOpen movement. This initiative, launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, encouraged schools and districts to adopt free, openly licensed instructional resources. Sounded nice in theory, but I didn't see it working: Where was the quality control? How would teachers be able to tell if they were getting good stuff? In a crowded sea of free resources, how many hours would it take to even find what they needed?

Then, earlier this year, I went to a conference and met Karen Vaites, who calls herself a "curriculum evangelist" and is an enthusiastic promoter of OERs, Open Educational Resources. Talking to Karen over cheeseburgers at one of the diviest bars in Austin, I was convinced to give OERs another look.

Karen Vaites, curriculum evangelist

In our podcast interview, which you can listen to above, Karen and I talk about how OERs have gotten really, really good over the last few years, what some new platforms are doing to solve the quality problem, and where teachers can go to find outstanding materials-from single-use resources to full-year curricula-that are 100% free.

What are Open Educational Resources?

The U.S. Department of Education defines OERs as "teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification, and sharing with others. Digital openly licensed resources can include complete online courses, modular digital textbooks as well as more granular resources such as images, videos, and assessment items."

So unlike materials that your school needs to purchase from a publishing company or independent seller, OERs are completely free.

Vaites cautions teachers to pay attention to licensing when looking for OERs. "All things that are OER are given away for free," she says, "but all things that are free are not OER, so if you go to Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers and you find a free resource, that resource may not actually give you the permission to edit and modify as you see fit."

True OERs will be marked with a Creative Commons license, which gives users permission to use the resource for free. There are six different levels of licenses, each of which comes with its own restrictions. The licenses are pictured below and more details are available about each one at the Creative Commons website.

Creative Commons Licenses. Learn what each license means here.

Why Should Teachers Pay Attention to Open Resources Now?

Free resources have always been around, but over the last 10 years or so, they have gotten a lot better and more comprehensive.

Vaites explains the whole spectrum of available OERs with a graph, where the X-axis represents the size of the resource.

"On the left side of that continuum you have supplement-scale materials: everything from a math practice item to a poem to one lesson. On the right you have curriculum-scale materials: teacher and student materials for a full grade band for a full year, complete with scope and sequence, and usually with assessments."

The Y-axis would represent how aligned those resources are with specific standards. Some subject areas, like ELA and math, are held more tightly to specific standards, while others, like art, have fewer specific requirements.

Over the last few years, that top right quadrant has grown. "A big shift is this movement from there not only being lots and lots of open resources that were available that were maybe smaller in grain size-more like supplements-to us actually having OER curricula," Vaites says.

And many of the newer resources are excellent. "We see a lot of intentionality around creating a more student-centered, hands-on, active learning instructional model."

How Can Teachers Steer Clear of Free "Junk"?

Despite the existence of outstanding materials, the task of finding them in a sea of potentially low-quality resources can still be overwhelming. What can busy teachers do to make sure they are finding the best free resources out there?

When it comes to the smaller, one-off resources-the supplement side of the continuum-where "it's still a bit of everything," Vaites says educators mostly have to rely on user ratings.

"You can definitely find some things (on Amazon Inspire, for example) that have a pile of high star ratings, and just like anything else when you're searching on Amazon, that can be a really useful proxy for quality. But you also don't know who gave those star ratings, and did they give it because they liked the design or because it's instructionally nutritious?"

"It's a lot easier on the curriculum side of the continuum," she says, "because we have organizations that do third-party reviews, all created by teams of educators."

One of these organizations is EdReports, a nonprofit that puts together teams of educators to review full curricula. "They put out reviews of all kinds of programs," Vaites says, "whether you're looking at OERs or even commercial products, they're just a wonderful resource to separate the good from the just OK to the not so great."

Where to Find the Best Open Resources
Platforms with supplement-scale resources that are rated or curated: Curriculum-Scale Open Educational Resources: Available today and highly-rated by EdReports: Eagerly-anticipated curricula, for which strong reviews are anticipated: Additional Options
Core Knowledge History and Geography and Science Curricula

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A Closer Look at Open Educational Resources

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OERs have gotten really good over the last few years, and they're totally free, but in order to steer clear of the crap, you have to know where to look.

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Improve your students' reading comprehension with ReadWorks. Access thousands of high-quality, free K-12 articles, and create online assignments with them for your students.

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Our nonprofit's mission: to increase equity in K-12 education by making excellent, top-rated curricula openly accessible to districts and schools.

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"While the exceptional quality of these materials is our primary focus, we are also drawn to the potential of materials that marry superior standards-alignment with affordability, as Open Educational Resources."

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Our nonprofit's mission: to increase equity in K-12 education by making excellent, top-rated curricula openly accessible to districts and schools. Customized professional learning We tailor PL plans to focus on supporting teams-teachers and/or your own coaches and trainers-with all necessary shifts in practice.

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Home - OpenSciEd

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Our curriculum fosters deep, engaging science learning and is the only curriculum designed for the NGSS that has had every unit rated as quality -and it's freely available to anyone.

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As they face more challenging academic standards and an increasingly diverse student population, many schools and districts are finding that a tool central to almost every classroom-a textbook-is no longer enough.

I saw this firsthand. As our California district transitioned to 1:1 technology, teachers began abandoning textbooks in favor of digital resources-videos, primary source materials, and interactive tools-that were better fits for inquiry-focused and project-based activities. The unanswered question was whether those self-curated resources, which individual teachers collected online, were consistent in quality.

That's how the Grossmont Union High school district became part of the open educational resources, or OER, movement, using openly licensed textbooks and learning resources that are intended to be freely used and adapted. Three years later, five of our high school courses are textbook-free, drawing from a central OER text and a variety of supplemental resources, activities, and lesson materials. These resources were chosen by teams of teachers in four subject areas assigned to vet and curate OER materials. Teams are now working to adapt materials in additional subjects.

Far from just replacing costly textbooks, OER materials have the potential to provide more relevant, engaging materials adapted by teachers to meet the needs of their specific student populations. Nationally, a growing base of research suggests that both K-12 and higher education students perform as well-if not better-when teachers use high-quality OER. And momentum is growing: 121 districts in 20 states have joined the U.S. Department of Education's #GoOpen initiative, which supports "the use of openly licensed educational resources to transform teaching and learning."

The reality, however, is that districts are largely on their own in this work. Federal and other outside resources are limited. Most states also leave curriculum development and vetting to districts, meaning they have to take the lead when it comes to supporting-and funding-the use of OER.

But OER implementation is less about saving money than it is shifting learning away from off-the-shelf curricula and toward student-centered classrooms. Those who see OER as a cost-savings effort will be disappointed, as adopting these materials effectively requires ongoing investments in time and training. And districts which leave decisions up to individual teachers won't scale the benefits to teaching, learning, and student engagement-or understand whether materials are valid or being appropriately used.

The national nonprofit Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education has developed a free open-source guidebook for school librarians involved in OER curation, informed by lessons from my own district and 14 others. (This OER-curation framework was developed in partnership with Florida State University's School of Information and supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.)

When planning to harness the power of open educational resources, we found that district leaders should start with the following factors:

* Well-resourced libraries and professionals. Because of their expertise in content curation and helping students navigate online resources, librarians play an important role in expanding the use of OER. This role, however, comes at a time when school libraries and librarians have been marginalized, despite research showing "correlations between high-quality library programs and student achievement," particularly in districts serving low-income and minority students. According to a 2018 analysis by the Education Week Research Center, the nation's public schools have lost 20 percent of their librarians and media specialists since 2000, with districts serving students of color hit the hardest.

It's hard to see how districts can make OER work without strong libraries and librarians. In our district, we've realized how important librarians are in cataloging resources and identifying supplemental materials with the right fit for our programs. As we start the curation process with new subjects, librarians are now involved from the beginning.

* School district and school building leadership buy-in. Leaders must not only support initial OER adoption, but champion how this work advances desired changes in teaching and learning and set clear policies that identify the roles educators will play in curating materials. Librarians and educators must be empowered by district leaders and principals to create and nurture collaborative networks to drive the curation work, which includes finding, modifying, evaluating, and making accessible OER content.

* Dedicated funding. Districts must redirect cost savings from eliminating textbooks to support educator staffing and time to develop the materials. Support for training and curation require ongoing investments in time and money. In our district, cost savings have also been used to purchase additional supplemental materials that amplify the benefits of OER materials. From the beginning, we also worked with our teachers' union to include in our collective bargaining agreement provisions to pay teachers for their time planning and curating OER materials.

Joining the open educational resources movement is never going to be seamless, but it offers real returns. In our district, OER has supported broader efforts to bolster student engagement. We know students learn more when they see themselves in the classroom. The use of OER enhances educators' ability to adapt materials in ways that meet the needs of their individual students, improving equity and engagement. That's an important benefit which, instead of overblown promises of cost savings or digital classrooms, can bolster support from parents and the community.

It also doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. OER can serve as a valuable supplement to established curricula and proprietary learning programs. Teachers often find that pre-designed curricula and learning materials have gaps or miss opportunities to connect lessons in a relevant way to their students. OER offers an opportunity to supplement those materials to make them more timely and relevant to students and current events.

One of our biggest lessons was that good OER use mirrors good classroom practice. In our district, OER has accelerated our emphasis on inquiry and project-based learning. Teachers have said the curation process itself has helped them think more deeply about not just the materials they teach, but how they teach. When implemented well with educators in the lead, OER can become a vehicle to rethink instructional practices in ways that serve our real students rather than the imagined students for whom the textbooks are written.

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How to Harness the Tremendous Potential of Open Education Resources (Opinion)

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As they face more challenging academic standards and an increasingly diverse student population, many schools and districts are finding that a tool central to almost every classroom-a textbook-is no longer enough. I saw this firsthand.

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The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.

MERLOT is an international community of educators, learners, and researchers.

Add a Material

Submit an online learning material you've found or created to the MERLOT Collection.

Create your own materials, add materials to the MERLOT collection, and be a part of the community. All for free!

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The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers. MERLOT is an international community of educators, learners, and researchers. Submit an online learning material you've found or created to the MERLOT Collection.

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Over 1.1 billion simulations delivered

160interactive simulations

97language translations

3001teacher-submitted lessons

Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.

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Students Create an account and start your course. News and Events The Simon Initiative Harnessing a learning-engineering ecosystem

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In this activity, students further explore the short film Popped Secret: The Mysterious Origin of Corn, by working through the mathematical concepts behind George Beadle's claim that teosinte is the wild ancestor of maize.

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Empowering Educators. Inspiring Students. Real science, real stories, and real data to engage students in exploring the living world.

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TED-Ed celebrates the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Discover hundreds of animated lessons, create customized lessons, and share your big ideas.

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Open Author helps you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you and for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere.

Learn more about creating OER

Groups provides a flexible environment to organize, create, share, and discuss resources with others in your network. Collaborate with group members, tag and add resources to shared folders, create your own collections, all within a public or private group.

Groups

Search through collections curated by our digital librarians

Collections

Common Core resources organized for your needs

Common Core

Hubs

A Custom Resource Center

Projects, districts, states, and initiatives make use of Hubs to bring groups of educators together to create, organize, and share OER collections that meet their common goals. Explore Hubs

Microsites

Custom Digital Libraries

Microsites are custom, flexible sites that include all the features available on OER Commons. Microsites allow your users to search resource collections using a custom taxonomy at a unique URL. Contact Us

Our award-winning OER Professional Learning programs support instructors and curriculum specialists to gain the necessary skills required to find, adapt, and evaluate high quality open materials.

In-person and virtual OER workshops help focus instructors to develop a "commons" mindset, to experience the benefits of open processes using the platform's tools, collaborative features, and workflows. This can include using Open Author for creating, remixing, and publishing shared curriculum.

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How to Search OER Commons

View all How-to videos

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OER Commons is a dynamic digital library and network. Explore open education resources and join our network of educators dedicated to curriculum improvement.

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. According to Buban, this desire from college students is pushing universities and colleges to find other ways for students to access materials. In turn, companies are now publishing Open Educational Resources (OER), which allow students open access to resources, free of charge. Pearson | April 28, 2016 - Now more than ever, there is a desire from college students to have alternative options for buying traditional textbooks. This topic was a main concern for Jill Buban, senior director of the Online Learning Consortium, at the recent CITE conference in Amelia Island

The Pros and Cons of Open Educational Resources

The goal of using OERs is to provide students with an alternative to the cost of textbooks. When students have access to OER, they have instant access to course materials from anywhere in the world for free. That type of access can provide course materials that best meet course and program needs, as well as individual student needs. What makes this option great is that students can access course materials from home, in study-abroad programs, while abroad for the military, and many other situations that may make attending courses in person difficult for some types of students (Buban, 2016). OER provides busy students with on-the-go access, which for most students is the easier option, as well as the fact that it is cheaper.

For most faculty, "the time and effort required to find, evaluate and adopt these materials is the critical factor" (Babson, 2015). Switching to OER is a huge change for some faculty to make, and will require faculty to change their curriculum and adapt their classroom needs. One of the biggest problems is not that faculty are unwilling, but they feel they are unaware of OER. According to the Babson Survey, "depending on the strictness of the awareness measure, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all faculty classify themselves as unaware on OER" (Allen, n.d.). Another aspect to consider is that "awareness of OER is not a requirement for adoption of OER. More faculty are using OER than report they were aware of the term OER" (Allen, n.d.). What this means is that some faculty are unaware of OER, but also that many faculty at universities have used online resources without necessarily referring to them as OER.

Choosing the Right OER

If you need help choosing OER resources, Jill Buban had some good advice in her session at Cite. She explained the 4Cs of choosing the right OER for your institution. She suggested that when choosing an OER, it is necessary to think about copyright policies, the creative commons, course levels, and creativity. She also said that some questions to consider are whether or not the material is something that you as an educator want to reuse, whether it will work for all levels of your course, and how you can creatively manipulate the materials to provide your students with all different types of perspectives (Buban, 2016).

WCET can also help with finding resources. Director Tanya Spilovoy has recently launched a series that provides faculty with strategies to find, adopt and manage OER. According to Spilovoy, the University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library , as well as Rice University's OpenStax College are both great resources that house open textbooks for university use. During the webinar, Matthew Cooper, associate provost of The Center for Learning and Technology at Thomas Edison State University, explained how they wanted to keep costs low, and design courses to learning outcomes. The university became one of a cohort of institutions using Intellus Learning software to deliver OER content (WCET webcast, n.d.).

When it comes down to it, faculty need to choose the right OER for their individual students, which may change from university to university. In order to successfully use OER, faculty need to feel comfortable with the OER they choose, and be able to adequately adapt them to their own institution's needs. In the switch to OER, Spilovoy recommends faculty begin talking with their institution's instructional design team. They can provide valuable guidance in finding content.

Jill Buban was a featured speaker at our recent 2016 Cite Online and Blended Learning conference. The virtual track of this conference features many great speakers on all types of topics around online and blended learning. Register today at a reduced rate to access these webinars . You will then have access through August 2016 to more than 35 virtual recordings.

SOURCE: Pearson

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Open Educational Resources: Where and How to Get Started - OLC

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Pearson | April 28, 2016 - Now more than ever, there is a desire from college students to have alternative options for buying traditional textbooks. This topic was a main concern for Jill Buban, senior director of the Online Learning Consortium, at Read More >

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As long as there have been teachers, there has been sharing: binders of lesson plans, boxes of laminated hand-drawn math games, even recycled scraps of art projects. But with the advance of the internet and particularly online social platforms like YouTube and Pinterest, the ability to develop, share, and adapt even complex curricular materials has exploded.

From Coursera's free college classes to EngageNY's common-core curriculum materials to physicist Henry Reich's Minute Physics cartoons, educational materials are available at every scale online. But what makes a particular set of materials "open," and how can schools best use these materials?

What are open educational resources?

Open educational resources are materials for teaching or learning that are either in the public domain or have been released under a license that allows them to be freely used, changed, or shared with others.

OER may include everything from a single video or lesson plan to a complete online course or curriculum and also include the software platforms needed to create, change, and share the materials.

How is OER different from other online materials?

Many materials billed as OER do not technically fall into that category. For example, a video that has a creative commons license might not necessarily be open; the agreement may instead allow it to be freely used but not altered or repurposed, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 2015 study of OER. Other materials allow sharing and modifications but only within a paid subscription service. That would also not be considered OER.

That does not mean OER has to be completely nonprofit. To make ongoing OER projects sustainable, some have allowed companies to offer organized "playlists" or other curated packages of materials for a fee. Other projects, such as the SciShow series on YouTube, allow donations through patronage websites such as Patreon and Subable.

Also, because there are many different types of open licenses, OER users must be careful of the fine print about how the material can be reused, adapted, or distributed.

What does federal education law say about open educational resources?

The Every Student Succeeds Act highlights "openly licensed content" in its definition of digital learning, noting that such resources can strengthen students' educational experiences.

See Also: Special Report: Navigating New Curriculum Choices
In this special report, Education Week focuses on helping educators navigate an increasingly diverse marketplace of new-and often promising-curricular choices.

The law explicitly allows states to use federal block grants provided by Title IV to support local projects aimed at "making instructional content widely available through open educational resources, which may include providing tools and processes to support local educational agencies in making such resources widely available."

And beginning in fiscal 2018, the U.S. Department of Education will require a majority of its competitive-grant winners to openly license any final products created with the money-such as teacher professional-development units, curricula, or any other copyrightable materials, as well as the supplemental materials needed to use them. The departments of Labor and State and the National Science Foundation have similar requirements for some of their grants.

"However, the open-licensing rule is now delayed, as the Trump administration is rethinking most rules put into place under the Obama administration.

How are open educational resources used?

The vast majority of districts that use open materials include them as formal or ad hoc supplements to an existing curriculum or program. For example, teachers may use an open lesson plan online to add an enrichment activity for students or to provide additional practice for students struggling with a concept. A teacher with a limited science lab might use open online videos to craft demonstrations of classic experiments. Users have downloaded some or all of EngageNY, the Empire State's open library of materials aligned with the Common Core State Standards, more than 45 million times.

Some schools and districts, such as the Houston public schools, have curated collections of open materials into a single digital library to make it easier for teachers to find specific lesson plans or materials for their grade level and subject.

And a handful of districts, including one in Grandview, Wash., are moving away from traditional textbooks entirely in some subjects and instead creating digital curricula made up only of open resources. These can be updated as new materials come in, but they require significant commitment to review and catalog materials for teachers.

What are the potential downsides of using open educational resources?

Because anyone can create and distribute an open resource, individual states, districts, and even teachers generally decide whether any given OER is high quality and appropriate to a particular grade, subject, or group of students. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics warned that OER can create equity problems if different schools within the same district use materials of different levels of quality.

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Open Educational Resources (OER): Overview and Definition

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As long as there have been teachers, there has been sharing: binders of lesson plans, boxes of laminated hand-drawn math games, even recycled scraps of art projects. But with the advance of the internet and particularly online social platforms like YouTube and Pinterest, the ability to develop, share, and adapt even complex curricular materials has exploded.

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Free textbooks for students aren't a compromise for educators. Each ancillary in our library of resources is complete and ready to use. Like our textbooks, our instructor resources are also openly licensed, allowing you to adapt them to fit yours and your needs and your student's.

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Free textbooks for students aren't a compromise for educators. Each ancillary in our library of resources is complete and ready to use. Like our textbooks, our instructor resources are also openly licensed, allowing you to adapt them to fit yours and your needs and your student's.

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Open Educational Resources (OER): Resource Roundup

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An educators’ guide to open educational resources with information about online repositories, curriculum-sharing websites, and sources for lesson plans and activities.

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Open educational resources (OER) are learning materials published under an open license, ranging from full curricula and textbooks to individual videos and images.

OER offer many advantages:

They allow teachers to adapt, remix and share materials at will to continually improve learning resources.

They increase equity by removing barriers for cash-strapped schools and districts.

They let teachers curate a blend of instructional materials, supplementing formal published curricula with online and self-created materials.

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Open educational resources (OER) are learning materials published under an open license, ranging from full curricula and textbooks to individual videos and images. OER offer many advantages: They allow teachers to adapt, remix and share materials at will to continually improve learning resources. They increase equity by removing barriers for cash-strapped schools and districts.

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Open Educational Resources | Feature

16 OER Sites Every Educator Should Know

Photo: Shutterstock.com

Open educational resources not only save students from triple-digit (or more!) textbook costs, but they also allow instructors to mix-and-match content for a more personalized, engaging learning experience. Here are 16 resources that offer a wide range of content and tools to help implement OER in just about any course.

1) College Open Textbooks
This site lists open textbooks organized by subject area, many of which have been peer reviewed for their suitability at community colleges.

3) Lumen Learning
This OER-focused company provides open courses with "zero textbook cost." Their curriculum comes with all the OER students will require.

4) MERLOT II
The California State University System's collection of slightly more than 45,000 resources is rated, peer-reviewed and tallied by how many "personal collections" each resides in. It lists more than 3,000 open textbooks, some of which have accessibility information for students with disabilities.

8) Open Education Consortium
The Open Education Consortium is a community of 240-plus schools as well as organizations and people who want to advance the idea of "open education." It features an OER resource toolkit, webinars, in-person events and links to open textbooks.

Open Learning Initiative
Carnegie Mellon's (PA) open courses (and associated content) denote a marked emphasis on STEM, including computing.

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16 OER Sites Every Educator Should Know -- Campus Technology

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Open educational resources not only save students from triple-digit (or more!) textbook costs, but they also allow instructors to mix-and-match content for a more personalized, engaging learning experience. Here are 16 resources that offer a wide range of content and tools to help implement OER in just about any course.

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MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course Materials

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MIT OpenCourseWare is a web based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity

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Learn computer science. Change the world.

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Every student in every school deserves the opportunity to study computer science.

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Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

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A lot has changed since MIT first announced that it would be making its course materials freely available online. Back in 2001, the idea that university-level content could be accessed at no cost by users anywhere in the world was virtually unheard of, and the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative was a major driver in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement.

Today, Open Educational Resources, which allow teachers and learners to freely use, adapt and redistribute educational content, are widespread. In addition to MIT OCW, learners can now access content from a host of other top notch education providers including Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Yale University.

What Employers Want

Employers' viewpoints on non-traditional education have changed too, and research indicates that the majority of employers are now quite accepting of online degrees and certificates.

One possible reason for this shift in perspective is that business is increasingly being conducted virtually as well, so less emphasis is being put on the type of credential, and more on how a candidate's skills and experience translate to the job. Since pursuing an education online often means balancing studying with a fulltime job and family commitments, successfully completing an online course can also speak volumes about a candidate's flexibility and time management skills.

Employers do point out that candidates should be prepared to justify why an online credential was right for them, so this is something to bear in mind when highlighting online certifications on your resume. Another concern employers have is that online students may not have had as much opportunity for group collaboration and may therefore lack team working skills. So the ability to work well with others is something that should always be backed up with clear examples on a resume.

Where to Start

Since open educational resources include everything from online textbooks to video recorded lectures, and there's such a wide range of content freely available online, it can sometimes be difficult for learners and teachers to know where to invest their time.

So if you're looking for top-notch educational resources that will help you reach your learning goals or support your students, we've compiled a list of some of the most valuable open educational resources available today.

Free Learning

As the forerunner of the Open Educational Resource movement, MIT's Open CourseWare is still one of the most valuable OERs for both learners and teachers.

If you're a student, you can use the course finder tool to browse courses by topics. When you find one you're interested in, you can examine the course goals, key topics, and sequence to determine whether it will meet your needs. You can even cherry pick specific concepts you'd like to study from different courses rather than following just one course from beginning to end.

If you're a teacher, you can use the OCW Educator Portal to sift through courses using terms like "Active Learning or "Instructional Design." You can also access valuable teaching materials such as images, lecture slides, and videos from MITs leading researchers in the OCW resource library.

Although Lumen Learning isn't entirely free to use, it is a great resource for affordable learning materials and courses. Teachers can use it to access digital content, supplemental materials, and customisable courses for more than 50 subjects. Students can use it to cut down on textbook costs by accessing affordable learning materials such as e-books, videos, and other interactive materials in one place. It can also improve learning outcomes by providing students with opportunities for real-time feedback.

Khan Academy is another open educational resource that's geared both towards learners and educators. Learners can access educational content on a wide range of topics from science and engineering to computer programming, all from a personalised learning dashboard that enables them to study at their own pace. Teachers can make use of the practice exercises and instructional videos in their lesson planning, and the teacher dashboard makes it easy to check class performance at a glance, while also identifying any students who might be struggling.

Merlot is the California State University's collection of online learning and support materials, as well as content creation tools. It consists of more than 40,000 materials that are rated and peer-reviewed by researchers, educators, and learners.

The learning materials are categorised into 22 different material types, including animation, case study, drill and practice, and simulation. Merlot members can also bookmark collections, leave comments and feedback, contribute their own materials, and even build their own courses.

OER Commons is a digital library of open educational resources created by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). With over 70,000 educational resources from providers like the British Library and Harvard University, it's a great tool for discovering and organising educational content. Open Educational Resource Commons is particularly useful for educators, as it allows them to build their own resources, lesson plans and courses, while using groups to collaborate with other educators in their network.

Based at Rice University, OpenStax is an educational initiative that provides students with free online access to high-quality peer-reviewed textbooks. Students can access textbooks for subjects like math and science, humanities, and business. The OpenStax Tutor, which is based on cognitive science principles and machine learning, also gives them access to online courseware and learning tools that will help them complete their course.

Academic Earth brings together educational content and course materials from some of the best universities in the world, including Stanford, Princeton, U.C. Berkely, MIT, and Yale. Students can browse the library of more than 1,500 lecture videos, which are organised by school, subject, and scholar, and then download the ones they like or even find curated playlists based on their interests.

In collaboration with OpenStax, Learningpod created question sets for OpenStax textbooks and is now said to be the largest library of free online practice questions in the world. With Learningpod, teachers can assign practice sets and track student progress, and students can prepare for tests with high quality practice questions and then view reports and graphs showing how they did and which areas may need improvement.

Open Culture was voted as the best Open Educational Resource in the Education Resource People's Choice Awards conducted by Study.com. It's a great place to find free cultural and educational media related to movies, language, literature, and more. Students and teachers can use it to access everything from MOOCs and certificate courses to audio books, e-books, and textbooks, as well as unmissable movies and lectures.

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) was developed by representatives from Carnegie Mellon University, and provides academic and independent paid, but also open and free online courses. OLI's content, instructional design, tools, and delivery platform are evidence-based, and its courses have been proven effective by both independent and internal studies. Teachers can use the courses as supplemental material or textbook replacements, whereas independent learners can use the self-guided courses informally to learn more about a subject they're interested in.

Further Learning

Thinking of turning your online coursework into a more formalized academic path? Open Colleges' University Pathways program allows students to move directly into a degree course with an accredited university.

Earn a Bachelor of Social Work or Social Science (Social Welfare) at Charles Sturt University after completing coursework in Counselling, Community Service, or Youth Work at Open Colleges. Along the way, enjoy the Extra Benefits of the Community Service program by completing your work placement in Fiji through the Case Management Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Through the Australasian College of Health and Wellness, pursue an Associate or Bachelor Degree in Applied Health Science after earning your Diploma of Beauty Therapy.

Earn up to 5 units with the Australasian Institute of Higher Education after completing a Diploma of Social Media Marketing.

Complete your Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care, Leadership and Management, Social Media Marketing, Business, Nursing, Human Resource Management, Beauty Therapy, or Counselling at Open Colleges and pave the way for yourself at Southern Cross University's schools of Education, Business, Marketing, Nursing, Tourism and Hospitality Management, and Social Welfare.

Marianne Stenger is a London-based freelance writer and journalist with extensive experience covering all things learning and development. She's particularly interested in the psychology of learning and how technology is changing the way we learn. Her articles have been featured by the likes of ABC Education, The Huffington Post, Lifehacker, and Psych Central. Follow her on Twitter @MarianneStenger.

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10 Open Educational Resources You Should Know About | InformED

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A lot has changed since MIT first announced that it would be making its course materials freely available online. Back in 2001, the idea that university-level content could be accessed at no cost by users anywhere in the world was virtually unheard of, and the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative was a major driver in the Open...

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Spotlight on Classroom Resources

OER Project materials provide a view of the larger world to your students, preparing them for college, career and beyond.

A course that asks big questions about our Universe, our planet, life, and humanity.

Covers Big Bang to the present

Adapts for grades 6-10

More than 50 lesson plans across 10 units

62 videos, 117 texts, 40 activities

Three courses to meet your needs: Origins to Present, 1200 to Present, and 1750 to Present.

Aligned to the vast majority of world-history state standards

Designed for high school

More than 30 lessons

More than 60 videos, 180 texts, 180 activities

A new take on climate education, developing critical thinkers and impatient optimists.

21 lessons across 5 units

Flexible materials for easy modification

Designed for grades 6-12

13 videos, 15 texts, 29 activities

Join OER Project

Join OER Project to get instant access to all of our courses and materials for free with absolutely zero hidden catches.

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OER Project's free, online social studies and world history curricula are aligned to state standards and develop key historical thinking skills.