Open Educational Resources (OERs) are openly licensed, freely available materials - typically found online - that can be used for educational purposes. These provide instructors with the opportunity to create flexible course content that can be easily integrated into D2L while reducing costs for students.
Click each license icon to view additional information.
When you use a Creative Commons Licensed work, you must provide attribution. Attribution Statements should include the following information:
1) Title of the original work
2) Link to the original work (typically the Title is Hyperlinked)
3) Creator of the original work
4) Creative Commons License of the original work
5) Link to the Creative Commons License (typically the License is Hyperlinked)
Example: "CC License Compatibility Chart" created by Kennisland, CC0
World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500
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Modern World History
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An Outline History of East Asia to 1200
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History of International Relations
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Web As History: Using Web Archives to Understand the Past and the Present
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American Panorama is an historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century. It combines cutting-edge research with innovative interactive mapping techniques, designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in American history or a love of maps. The collections of resources and maps are generally licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.
Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century. The Atlas is likely in the public domain, but that is not easy to confirm. Regardless, the Carnegie Institution of Science, whether or not they own copyright, has, in their words, "no objection to the use of the material for non-commercial, non-political, educational purposes."
Since OERs are typically digital, the best place to look is online. If you're just getting started, you may want to forgo a Google Search and start looking in well known OER Repositories (listed at the bottom of this page in the OER Collections box). Some of the most common starting places for faculty are the Open Textbook Library, Lumen Learning, and OpenStax.
As OER become more popular, more powerful search tools are being developed. The Mason OER Metafinder (the MOM) and OASIS are two such search engines. These two resources search across a variety of known OER repositories, presenting results from multiple locations in one convenient place.
College and University LibGuides are another great place to look for discipline-specific resources. Librarians take great care in selecting resources that they think best suit the needs of their faculty.
And, of course, when you feel comfortable in your ability to find and recognize OER, Google Searching is always a viable option. Combine subject-specific search terms with recommended OER search terms to get started. Remember when browsing online to always check the license, terms, and conditions associated with a resource to be sure that it is OER!
The resources listed in the OER Collections box below are a great starting place for any OER search!
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 72 different sources and contains 165,592 records.
Recommended Search Terms:
Combine these or other terms with your subject-based terms
Canvas Commons is a learning object repository that enables educators to find, import, and share resources. A digital library full of educational content, including OERs, Commons allows Canvas users to share learning resources with other users as well as import learning resources into a Canvas course.
Available in all Canvas Free for Teacher (FFT) Accounts
A Member of Minnesota State
