About this Guide

Welcome to Version 2.0 of uOttawa’s OER by Discipline Guide! Building on the success of Version 1.0, it contains even more suggestions of open educational resources (OER) assembled and evaluated by librarians for courses offered at the University of Ottawa.

Purpose

“The problem with open educational resources is that I feel like we’re in such a large pool, and I can’t find anything with my small spoon.” – Marie-Cécile Domecq, Research Librarian (Health Sciences), University of Ottawa (2020)

As our colleague put it so vividly, searching for OER can be a daunting and time-consuming task. It has been identified as an ongoing challenge by instructors and librarians alike. This guide was developed with the goal of facilitating the discovery and use of OER at uOttawa by presenting professors (and students) with suggestions of free and open teaching and learning resources in their subject areas.

This guide was heavily inspired by the one created at McMaster University and others (see Credits). Like other lists of this type, it is not comprehensive and will continue to be a work in progress.

While in-person learning has resumed after two long years of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is still difficult, if not impossible, for academic libraries to acquire some resources assigned in courses, especially digital textbooks, due to publishers’ restrictions.^[1] OER are free, accessible, and adaptable alternatives to commercial teaching materials.

If you are already using an open educational resource in your course, please share your adoption with us so they can be included in this guide by completing the adoption form.^[2] If you have other OER to suggest, please do so through the Suggestions, Comments, and Corrections form.

We hope that as uOttawa faculty, instructors, or students you will find this guide (and its French version) helpful as you consider the options available for quality, open educational resources for your courses.