Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER) are free materials you can use in your courses. Using
these resources has several important benefits to you and your students:
- Academic Freedom - you control the content and pick only the resources and materials that are specific to your lesson plans and teaching style.
- Timely & Relevant - textbooks can become outdated quickly, but OER are continually updated with new and revised content being added regularly.
- Cost Savings - open resources save your students money.
Not only is cost an important issue, but OER is part of a global initiative to expand educational access for all underserved populations. Most importantly, Senate Bill 1359 comes into play in January of 2018, and this will empower students to view which course sections incorporate OER materials.
In addition to eCampus, there are five other great resources to help you successfully incorporate OER in your course.
- SJSU King Library -
CSU Affordable Learning Solutions - visit this website to find all kinds of open materials; free textbooks, individual modules, or whole courses. Your Affordable Learning Solutions contacts at the SJSU King Library are:
- Center for Faculty Development’s Additional Teaching Resources - this webpage has more than a dozen other links to open source content.
- MERLOT - the California State University System’s curated content for free and open educational
- Cool4ed - is California’s open online educational library. Use the ISBN search to find ebooks and related content.
- Open Education Consortium - the OEC is a global network that supports open educational practices. It encompases several hundred organizations and spans 40 countries.
- Creative Commons - promotes universal access to digital information and a spirit of collaboration. Learn more about using, adapting, sharing, and contributing to the commons.
- 10 Ways to Reduce Textbook Costs - quickly scan this article from the SJSU King Library for the best ways to reduce textbook costs.
- SJSU Library’s Electronic Resources & Permalinks - learn how to permanently link to the content you want to use in your course without violation of license restrictions or copyright law.
- Understanding a Proxy Server - when students access SJSU library resources off campus, a proxy server is an intermediary that authenticates their connection.