Tasmanian Institute of Learning & Teaching

Using Open Educational Resources (OER)

There is a multitude of Open Educational Resources (OER) available and it is difficult to know where to start. Many educators are simply looking for individual media elements to use within their courses, such as photos, graphics, videos, and audio, that are openly licensed in a way that freely permits educational use. However, some are also looking for discipline and multidisciplinary communities to engage in Open Educational Practices. This is sometimes done through the use of repositories, open courses and other online environments developed for sharing resources, practices and learning designs. Below on this page are some useful starting points for engaging with OER and OEP.

Open Professionals Education Network - Find OER

The Open Education Network provides an extensive list of locations and methods to find individual media elements to use within the courses, such as photos, graphics, videos, and audio, that are openly licensed in a way that freely permits education use. They also provide links to find other resources not commonly thought of as OER such as Recorded Lectures & Video Tutorials, Open Textbooks, Simulation and Animations, Modular Course Components, and Complete Courses.

WikiEducator

WikiEducator provides an Exemplary Collection of Open eLearning Content Repositories. The focus of the listing is to provide best practice examples.

The OER Landscape - How to find OER?

This open course module on how to find OER provides and extensive list of OER repositories. The module is attributed to UNESCO-COL and based on the content of Appendix 5 and 6 of the COL-UNESCO Basic Guide to OER.

Open Education Licensing (OEL) Toolkit

The OEL Toolkit, a tool that provides tailored copyright and licensing guidance for finding OER in Australian higher education.

OER Repositories World Map

The OER Repositories World Map identifies OER repositories by location

Gender Equity Image Bank

The Gender Image Equity Bank is a resource for academic staff at the University of Tasmania. It aims to counteract hidden bias in the university sector by creating graduates as agents of change through the creation of a visual teaching resource. Requires University of Tasmania login.

Adapt

The Adapt repository of Open Educational Resources aims to enhance learning and teaching in Adaptation studies. Scholars are invited to openly share learning and teaching materials across the disciplines in the Arts and Humanities to encourage the identification of a community of scholars who engage with the study of textual adaptation in a variety of contexts.

OER Africa

OER Africa is an initiative established by the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This initiative plays an important  role in supporting higher education institutions across Africa in the development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) to enhance teaching and learning in the areas of agriculture education, teacher education, health education and academic skills for higher education.

OER Asia

OER Asia is an Asian Forum to share information, views and opinion, research studies and knowledge resources in addition to guidelines and toolkits on good practices on and about Open Education Resources in the Asian Region.

OERu

The OER university (OERu) is a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit and aims to provide free learning opportunities to all students worldwide using OER learning materials.

ALT

The Association for Learning Technology, the UK's leading membership organisation in the learning technology field, established in march 2012 a Special Interest Group (SIG) in OER. The remit of this SIG is to support, develop, sustain and influence policy in open education.