About this Guide
Welcome to Version 2.0 of McMaster University’s OER by Discipline Guide. We’ve expanded our original resource and listed even more open textbooks and open educational resources (OER) organized by academic programs available at McMaster University. As a short refresher, OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by the copyright holder, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them.
Purpose
This guide was inspired by the wonderful work completed by BCcampus in their creation of a similar directory for their stakeholders. We are grateful to them for providing us with such a great example to work from.
The guide was developed to primarily highlight quality open textbooks and organize them so that McMaster faculty can easily locate resources in their disciplines or subject areas. This version has been updated to include newer publications that align with our programming as well as reflect the addition of open textbooks that may suit courses in the Faculty of Health Sciences. And although this update represents good progress, we are far from having a complete list and will be regularly updating this resource as we find additional, suitable materials to include. As this guide evolves, other OER — case studies, courses, games, simulations, videos, and more — may also be evaluated and added.
The guide parallels the programming McMaster offers within the six Faculties at McMaster, namely, the DeGroote School of Business and the Faculties of Engineering, Health Sciences, Humanities, Science and Social Sciences.
To locate materials, users may browse the Contents or use the search box located in the top-right of each page in the online version to locate a specific subject. Note that as McMaster is offering more interdisciplinary programming, we have duplicated entries in applicable program areas. Keep in mind that while we endeavoured to include titles that meet or exceed current accessibility requirements under the AODA, we recommend you evaluate any resources you are considering adding to your course (the chapter on Accessible OER in this resource from eCampusOntario is helpful).
We invite you to notify us if you discover a valuable OER within or related to your discipline. Please email us at oer@mcmaster.ca or complete this form to make your contribution.
We hope that McMaster faculty and instructors will find this guide helpful as they consider the options available for quality, open educational resources for their courses.
