8 Finding Open Education Resources

While there is not yet one central location where you can search for open education resources, we present here a list of quality collections to begin your search. With the repositories listed below, the search functions available on these websites have filters that you can use to narrow your search either by topic or by the type of material you are looking for. When you find a title you are interested in, explore it further by reviewing the Table of Contents, check chapter contents by reading online, determine the reading formats available and note the CC license.

Textbooks and Learning Materials Repositories

eCampus Ontario Open Library  – eCampus Ontario hosts a library of textbooks and learning material suitable for Post Secondary use in Ontario and beyond.

B.C. Open Textbook Collection – BCcampus has an extensive collection of textbooks and more, many with Canadian content.

Open Textbook Library – The Univeristy of Minnisota hosts almost 1,000 open textbooks.

Pressbooks Directory – Over 3,000 Open Education texts created with Pressbooks.

OER Commons is a digital public library of Open Education Resources.

Merlot Collection – Thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, exercise, texts and more.

H5P – Interactive learning objects that can be embedded into a web browser or LMS

Specific Examples of Open Resources

OpenGLAM – A coordinated space to support open access to cultural heritage initiatives and projects

Open Broadcast Software (OBS) – Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming

Where can you start exploring OER right now? We recommend you begin with eCampus Ontario’s Open Library and BCcampus’ Collections:

Highlight on eCampus Ontario Open Library

eCampus Ontario Open Library  has materials discoverable by subject. This is done with a filter during your search. eCampus Ontario Open Library contains many resources created and adapted by Ontario Post Secondary faculty in programs similar to what we offer. There are new resources added on a regular basis.

Highlight on BCcampus Collections

BCcampus has recently improved its OER Library by organizing the content into collections. If you are new to OER for post-secondary, this may be a good place to start to get a flavour of what kind of resouces are available.

Sample Textbooks by subjects

Here is a list of textbooks in different subject areas collected by Georgian College in a H5P interactive object.