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Open Access

What are OERs?

Open educational resources (OER's) are teaching and learning resources with an open licence or in the public domain.

OERs can be freely reused, modified, copied or shared.  

OERs include Open Textbooks.

Benefits of Open Textbooks

Choosing an open textbook for your course means:

  • Students have unlimited, ongoing access to the ebook
  • Students can download an unlimited number of chapters
  • You can modify the textbook
  • It is free to students and the library

Find Open Textbooks

BCcampus open textbook: a selection of open textbooks for a variety of subjects and specialties.

Mason OER metafinder: searching resources across OER specific websites.

MERLOT: curated open educational resources, including textbooks.

OER Commons: open educational resources, including textbooks

Open Textbook Library: hundreds of open textbooks which can be searched for or browsed by subject.

OpenStax: high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks published by Rice University.

Open textbook initiative 

Open texbooks for Social Work: many of these texts have relevance to related subjects such as sociology, psychology and public policy.

OASIS: openly Available Sources Integrated Search: a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open resources easier.

Teaching Commons: open educational resources from leading USA colleagues and universities.