OER MetaFinder - From George Mason University, The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) is a real-time federated search for OER content. MOM helps you find Open Educational Resources. Unlike other OER repositories (e.g, OER Commons,MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.) with this Metafinder you aren’t searching a database. This contribution aids to the progress of Open Education by concentrating on OER discovery—helping you find current content wherever it resides–even if it’s a new OER title that just dropped earlier today.
The OER Metafinder performs a simultaneous search across 18different sources of open educational materials. Because it is a real-time, federated search, it can take a bit longer than searches of pre-indexed, curated content; however, as compensation the results returned are absolutely up-to-the-minute for each search target. Additional results will continue to trickle in as the search continues running and you begin examining your results.
A distinct feature of the Mason OER Metafinder is the scope of its discovery service. Click here to read more....
Other Open Networks for Materials
OASIS - Find OER by Discipline - Searches 52 different sources. From SUNY Geneseo. Read about this project here.
Digital Commons Network - The largest repository of scholarly works from higher education institutions. Over two million works from over 400 institutions.
Merlot - A free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with assignments and comments to enhance the teaching experience of an exercise. From the California State University system.
OER Commons - This digital hub created by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education offers 73,000 kinds of OER, along with tools for creating OER, training on how to use OER and the ability to create OER "Commons" — groups that share resources for a given purpose.
The Open Course Library - The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts. Some of our materials (also called open educational resources, or OER) are paired with low cost textbooks ($30 or less). Many of the courses can be taught at no cost to students. Unless otherwise noted, all materials are shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY) license.OCL courses and materials have undergone testing for accessibility and have been designed using the industry-standard Quality Matters (QM) rubric for assessing the quality of online courses.
Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie Melon University) - Courses trusted globally as textbook replacements or as supplemental material. Course materials for instructors with student interface set up at a low cost per student.
OpenStax CNX - Also and initiative of Rice University, OpenStax CNX is the technology platform supporting OpenStax and provides the tools to customize content.
SPARC - Open Education - Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.
The foundation of Open Education is Open Educational Resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere. “Open” permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials.
