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Open Educational Resources: A New Guide for Faculty

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated an urgent need for electronic resources, as libraries’ print collections are temporarily inaccessible. Many publishers have responded by providing temporary free access to licenced e-books and journals. The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, however, provides a more lasting and radical solution.

OER are teaching and learning resources that are freely available to educators and learners. A new guide by Data & Digital Services Librarian Elizabeth Stregger provides information and links for faculty interested in finding and using Open Educational Resources.

Why use OER?

OER are developed by academics for academics. Besides being free, they come with user rights including the “5R” activities outlined by Open Access advocate David Wiley:

• Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
• Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
• Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
• Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

From Wiley, D. (2014, March 5). The access compromise and the 5th R. Iterating Towards Openness.

Most Open Educational Resources come with a mix of user rights, outlined in the licencing attached to each book or resource.

OER come in a wide range of subject areas. Examples:

Environmental Science: A Canadian Perspective (6th ed.) by Bill Freedman

"This textbook is intended to provide the core elements of a curriculum for teaching environmental science at the introductory level in Canadian colleges and universities." Written by conservation biologist and Dalhousie faculty member Bill Freedman (1950–2015) and produced by Dalhousie Libraries.
Licence: CC BY-NC

Canadian History: Pre-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw

"Canadian History: Pre-Confederation is a survey text that introduces undergraduate students to important themes in North American history to 1867. It provides room for Aboriginal and European agendas and narratives, explores the connections between the territory that coalesces into the shape of modern Canada and the larger continent and world in which it operates, and engages with emergent issues in the field."

Licence: CC BY

Knowing Home: Braiding Indigenous Science with Western Science by Gloria Snively & Wanosts'a7 Lorna Williams

"Book 1 provides an overview of why traditional knowledge and wisdom should be included in the science curriculum, a window into the science and technologies of the Indigenous peoples who live in Northwestern North America, Indigenous worldview, culturally responsive teaching strategies and curriculum models, and evaluative techniques."

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA

See the Find OER Books and Find OER Course Materials pages of the OER Guide for more examples and links to OER catalogues. For questions about OER, please contact your subject librarian.