Open Educational Resources (OER)

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open educational resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. It is the leading trend in distance education/open and distance learning domain as a consequence of the openness movement.

CCCS LOR and OER

The CCCS LOR contains both System-owned and free and open learning materials adapted from existing open educational resources (OER).

Other Resources for OER

There are many great places to locate OER. Here are a few suggestions:

  • OER Commons: OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
  • Open Textbook Library: Supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Textbook Network, the Open Textbook Library features peer-reviewed higher education textbooks.
  • MERLOT: 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.
  • Skillscommons.org: An open library of workforce training materials from California State University, MERLOT, US Dept. of Labor, and the US Dept. of Education.