McQuade LibGuides: Religious & Theological Studies: Open Educational Resources (OER)

What are Open Educational Resources?

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are high-quality, openly licensed, online educational materials that offer an extraordinary opportunity for people everywhere to share, use, and reuse knowledge. They also demonstrate great potential as a mechanism for instructional innovation as networks of teachers and learners share best practices." - The Hewlett Foundation

According to the Open Education Handbook OER need to meet the "5Rs Framework." This framework outlines that resources are free, and that users have the legal right to:

Retain- Make, own, and control copies of content
Reuse- Use unaltered content in a wide range of ways (posting to Blackboard, distributing in class, emailing to colleagues and students, etc.)
Revise- Adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
Remix- The original or revised content can be combined with other open content to create something new
Redistribute- Original content, your revisions, or your remixes can be shared with others

OERs are not just textbooks, other common resources include:

Learning modules
Syllabi
Learning objects
Course websites
Lectures and presentations
Course materials
Activities, labs, assignments
Software
Videos

Why OER?

OER are free and legal to reuse, improve, adapt, and share:

Save time by customizing existing educational resources to fit your course content
Find new opportunities to include interdisciplinary teaching and learning by integrating multiple resources

Redefine the "traditional" classroom:

Introduce multi-media and interactive sources to provide students with a variety of engaging learning tools
Go beyond the confines of the teaching from the textbook
Reduce educational material costs for students

Religious & Theological Studies OER

Gresham College Lectures - Religion
Free public lectures created by scholars on religion topics. Each lecture includes an audio file, a text transcript, and any other supplemental materials used by the presenter (presentation slides, handouts, etc). There is an extensive archive of past lectures, and a list of new and upcoming lectures to attend live.
OER Commons - Religious Studies
The OER Commons is a single search source that pulls materials from multiple OER collections. Use the left-side menu to refine your religious studies resources search by education level, material type, media format, and conditions of use.
American Theological Association (ATLA)
"A selective, annotated guide to a wide variety of electronic resources of interest to those who are involved in the study and practice of religion, including syllabi, electronic texts, electronic journals, web sites, bibliographies, liturgies, reference resources, and software."

Open Textbook Repositories

BC Open Textbook
The textbook section of the BC Campus OpenEd project. Textbooks created for the top 40 highest enrolled first and second year subject areas.
In Tech
One of the largest open access publishers and distributors of books in the science, technology, and medical fields.
MIT OpenCourseWare- Open Textbooks
Textbooks created for MIT OpenCourseWare classes, that open-licensed electronic versions of print books, self-published online books, or thorough course notes. Primarily for the science and engineering disciplines.
Open Access Publishing in European Network
Provides access to free, peer-reviewed academic textbooks produced for the humanities and social sciences.
Open Course Library (Washington Community & Technical Colleges)
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.
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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."
OpenStax College
Created by Rice University, these peer-reviewed text books are written by professional content developers to meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses.
Milne Open Textbooks
Established by the State University of New York, this open access initiative publishes high-quality resources and engages faculty as authors and peer-reviewers.
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Formerly Open SUNY Textbooks
Open Textbook Library
Created by the University of Minnesota, these faculty-reviewed textbooks cover a wide range of academic subjects.
Saylor Academy Open Textbooks
This non-profit organization sponsored by the Saylor Foundation, is focused on bringing "freely available education to all." This collection of open textbooks supports the Saylor online courses. It's a collection of open course materials for high-enrollment college courses.
Textbook Equity
Creator, publisher, and distributor of academically reviewed and classroom tested college-level textbooks. Many contain learning exercises, discussion questions, and other supplemental materials

Religious & Theological Studies

McQuade Library E-books

Open Ebook Repositories

What are Open Educational Resources?

Why OER?

Religious & Theological Studies OER

Open Textbook Repositories