The University of Manitoba campuses are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. More
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, R3T 2N2
Open educational resources (OERs) are teaching resources available in a variety of formats that have an open copyright license. This allows anyone to use, adapt and share them as needed. There are different types of open copyright licenses that allow a range of permissions to the user. Many of these are administered by Creative Commons.
Open educational resources and open pedagogy have many benefits for both faculty and students.
This page focuses on OER basics. More detailed information is available through the OER toolkit. For further help please contact your subject librarian.
Other units on campus also provide support with OER:
Open educational resources can be accessed and downloaded from several different websites. Many of these sources allow you to search by subject area making it easy to identify potential textbooks for your courses.
The OER by Discipline Guide: University of Manitoba edition is a reference resource customized for use at the UM, listing open textbook materials organized by faculty and department. It is an open work in progress that is updated periodically.
Find Textbooks by Subject
The Open Textbook Library includes textbooks authored by academics at several American universities and can be searched by subject area. The collection is made available from the University of Minnesota Centre for Open Education.
How to Find Textbooks by Subject:
The websites below can be searched for additional OER content. Some websites such as ECampus Ontario provide access to publications already available through BC Campus. Other websites, such as OASIS and George Mason allow you to search multiple catalogues simultaneously.
E-Campus Ontario is a shared collection of textbooks and other OERs, including textbooks from the BC Campus and Campus Manitoba catalogue. The collection also includes learning modules and video lectures.
Open Stax is a collection of open peer-reviewed materials from Rice University. The textbooks available are for introductory U.S. college level courses. Open Stax requires users to create a free account.
OER Commons is a repository for open learning materials. The collection includes textbooks, lesson plans, lectures, and other modules.
OASIS is an OER search engine available from SUNY that indexes 97 different sources for OERs. In addition to textbooks, OASIS can be searched for videos, primary sources, lessons, and other course materials.
MERLOT is a major OER repository, consisting of tens of thousands of learning materials. Materials in MERLOT are reviewed for suitability prior to adding, resulting in a more selective collection.
The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) searches 21 different sources of OERs but unlike other search engines it also searches for materials in public databases such as Hathi Trust and DPLA.
Visit Directory of Open Access Books
The Directory of Open Access Books is an extensive collection of peer reviewed materials from several international publishers. DOAB materials are also available through the UM Libraries search.
Read about evaluating OERs.
You may find an OER that requires modification for your context. Or you may find multiple OERs that you would like to combine parts of, which is referred to as “remixing.” In these cases, you can adapt the OER to meet your needs. The Campus Manitoba catalogue offers resources to help you get started on adaption and self publishing. Here are some examples.
Import, edit, format, incorporate interactive content, and publish in multiple formats using UM Libraries license to Pressbooks.
To get started, visit the Campus Manitoba Pressbooks network, choose Sign In, Institutional Login, and then University of Manitoba. From here you can use your UM login as usual. UM Learn integration now allows users to include private Pressbooks content into their courses for students to access. Learn how to integrate OER into UM Learn.
For more technical guidance, visit the Pressbooks User Guide and the Pressbooks FAQ. You can also look through the Pressbooks Directory to find examples.
View a recorded workshop about Pressbooks from the Libraries. Pressbooks also holds live training sessions. Visit the PressbooksEDU Training Schedule and register to participate.
OERs are usually licensed using Creative Commons (CC) licenses. To learn about what the different CC licenses allow, see the Creative Commons guide.
