Once you have decided to support your course with OER materials, it is helpful to know where to find what you are looking for. Let me begin by encouraging you to speak with your department librarian. They are fantastic resources for finding OER materials and support for your class. More importantly, if you tell them what you need, they can find exactly what you are looking for.

However, if you are like me and you like to explore on your own before you ask for deeper help, this post will help guide you in your exploration.

This is just a brief introduction to where you might start your adventure.

• How to find Creative Commons (CC) licensed resources
  • How to find a CC licensed video
  • How to find a CC licensed image
  • How to find CC licensed course material
  • How to find an open textbook
• How to attribute a CC licensed work

How to find Creative Commons (CC) licensed resources

There are a lot of repositories of CC-licensed materials and resources. At this stage, I want to make it easy for you to explore, basically giving you a rough map of where you can comfortably play in the OER playground. Please keep in mind that this is a small portion of what is available and our librarians have even more suggestions.

How to find a CC Licensed Video

• The Open Video Project These free videos are curated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but have not all been cleared of copyright issues. Many of them come from the federal government.
• Internet Archive – Movies This collection features videos archived by the Internet Archive. Check individual collections and movies for copyright status.
• YouTube You can specifically search for videos uploaded to YouTube with a Creative Commons license. After you run a search, click the Filters button and choose Creative Commons under the Features. However, you have to double check to see if the video you want is truly CC licensed

How to find a CC licensed image

• Openverse A newer program that searches through multiple sources. Includes images and audio files.
• PxHere Stock photos that have been placed in the public domain.
• Getty Images Getty Images has more than 100,000 images that are considered open. This search page is set up to include only those images.
• Wellcome Images These images from the Wellcome Trust have a focus on current and historical medical topics.
• Visual Hunt Millions of images that have been licensed with a Creative Commons license.
• Smithsonian Includes 2.8 million images from the Smithsonian’s collection that have been released in the public domain.
• Pexels Stock photos that have been placed in the public domain.

How to find CC licensed course material

• COOL4Ed Open Textbooks and course materials repository maintained by the California Open Online Library for Education
• Merlot Run by the California State University System
• Open Course Library Run by the Washington State board for Community and Technical Colleges
• My Open Math Run by Lumen Learning
• Achieving the Dream Catalog Run by Lumen Learning
• Open Michigan Run by the University of Michigan
• Open Yale Run by Yale University
• MIT Open Courseware Run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• ROAM Run by PennState University Libraries
• PhET Interactive Simulations for Science and Math Run by the University of Colorado Bolder.
• NIGMS Science Education Materials.
• Project Muse Open access humanities works.
• Project Gutenberg Collection of literary works
• Wikibooks Open book collections

How to find an open textbook

• OpenStax The most widely adopted open textbook repository for higher education
• BC Campus Open Textbooks used in British Columbia (Canada)
• Open Book Publishers Independed Humanities and Social Sciences Texts (UK)
• American Institute of Mathematics AIM approved textbooks
• LibreTexts Free Textbooks project with UC Davis and the Department of Education
• OER Commons public digital library of open educational resources
• Pressbooks Directory Curated by Pressbooks
• Open Maricopa Run by Maricopa Community Colleges Arizona
• Open Michigan Run by the University of Michigan
• Open Oregon The Oregon Pressbook Collection
• Milne Open Textbooks Run by SUNY Geneseo
• Open Textbook Library Run by the University of Minnesota
• Open Textbook Store Math textbooks under open licenses
• PDXScholar Run by Portland State University
• NAP National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine Press collection
• MOM (Mason OER Metafinder) searches many of the sources already listed here.
• OAPEN European Open Access Books

How do I attribute a Creative Commons licensed work?

A good rule of thumb is to recall the acronym TAL, which stands for Title, Author, and License.

• Title – Provide the title of the work you are adopting. Be sure to hyperlink the title to the original sources.
• Author – Name the author or authors of the material in question. If the author has a webpage, please link to the author’s page.
• License – Provide the exact name of the Creative Commons license under which the work was released and hyperlink the license name to the license deed page. You can use the acronyms instead of full name of the license.

Be cautious and courteous. Don’t just say the material is Creative Commons because the license should state how the material can actually be used. Remember that there are six different CC licenses; which one is the material under? Name and provide a link to it.

For example, How do I attribute a Creative Commons licensed work is adapted from Best Practices for Attribution by  CC Wiki licensed under  CC-BY.

Finding OER material to supplement or augment your current class materials can be easy and fun. I hope you feel more prepared for exploring what OER has to offer.

Don’t forget, your OER Committee is here to offer you peer guidance and support.

There are quite a few people who can share some of their exciting exploratory adventures: just ask Bruce what he is doing in Physics, Polly what she is doing in Psychology, John what he is doing in Business, James what he is doing in Communications, Bill what he is doing in Math, Sagarika what she is doing in Biology, Jeff what he is doing in English, Aubrei what she is doing in History, or Michael what he is doing in Geography or Sustainability and Environmental Studies! And those are just a few of the adventurers in OER that Glendale Community College has across the campus.

If you want to find out more, you can reach out to the OER Committee at OER @ the gccaz email address or your department librarian. We are here to help guide you on your OER Journey.

Finding OER content was adapted from three sources. Following the CC Smoothie Guidelines, this post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Sources:

• Module 6: Finding OER by Open Washington, Open Educational Resources Network is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License
• University of Nevada, Reno Scholarly Communication and Open Access Guide by Teresa Auch Schultz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
• Best Practices for Attribution by  CC Wiki is licensed under  CC-BY.