Open Educational Resources (OER)
“Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that provide users with (1) free and unfettered access and (2) 5R legal permissions to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute them, that can be used to replace traditional expensive learning resources (such as textbooks).” Open Education Group
U of L Campus Champions
In alignment with the Academic Plan (Section Teaching Development 2.2), the University of Lethbridge supports Open Education on our campus. This support can take many forms, including consultations and peer-hosted events that help you learn more about ways to approach OER adoptions, adaptations and/ or creations of openly licensed academic materials or low-cost alternatives.
If you are looking for assistance, come talk to any one of the Uleth OER Champions, the Teaching Centre, the Library and the Bookstore.
OER Benefits
Facilitate collaboration among content experts and students | |
Ensure academic freedom to use, modify, retain and share content | |
Enhance research and teaching visibility | |
Provide more relevant and engaging materials to students | |
Improve student retention by reducing costs | |
Grant learners access to knowledge and quality education (SDG4) anytime | |
Invite students to become content creators – meaningful assignments |
Locate high-quality OER
If you are curious now what kind of materials there are openly available for your discipline, feel invited to browse the virtual corkboard below, which assembles most major OER repositories in one place instead of many. You can access the virtual noticeboard below by simply clicking on the pink links, which will direct you to the original websites. You might want to start your search by using either of the two Metafinder tools on the top left (OASIS and MASON) as they search a multitude of major global OER repositories simultaneously. Note that as Open Education movement is gaining momentum, the pool of available high-quality (often also peer-vetted) academic OER is considerate and growing.