Introduction

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. —The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

The advantages and benefits that OER represent for learners and educators address inequities around affordability, access, learner retention and diversity and offer opportunities for creating, co-creating and re-mixing content to suit teaching and learning needs. One of the barriers identified in faculty adoption and use of OER involves the time it takes to find suitable materials in their discipline (eCampusOntario, 2018). This guide was developed to help alleviate this as it involves the creation of a targeted OER list by discipline for McMaster faculty and department use.

A project team, comprised of members of the University Library and the Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching, or MacPherson Institute, and students from different Faculties, found, evaluated and created this curation of OER specifically geared to the McMaster context. These OER primarily consist of peer-reviewed, open textbooks that are categorized and sorted by discipline. Some textbooks are also matched to McMaster courses. Creative commons licenses are not displayed in the list since they are apparent on the source documents. We are hoping that this guide will serve as a resource for faculty, and staff assisting faculty with their selection of course materials (e.g., Library, MacPherson Institute, Campus Store).

The goal of this guide is to curate and organize quality OER so that McMaster faculty can easily find and source materials for their subject areas and courses. The guide will not remain static but will continue to be populated and revised. Comments and suggestions from all users are welcome and can be made by emailing us at oer@mcmaster.ca, or anonymously by using this feedback form

Reference

eCampusOntario. (2018). Awareness and use of open educational resources (OER) in Ontario: A preliminary study of post-secondary educator perspectives [Research report].