Women's & Gender Studies

"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

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

• Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons

  Part of the Digital Commons network, this collection contains scholarly and other resources that can be narrowed by topic.
• FemmeTechNet

  "FemTechNet is an activated network of hundreds of scholars, students, and artists who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism in a variety of fields including Science and Technology Studies (STS), Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women’s, Queer, and Ethnic Studies."
• Herstories: Audio/Visual Collections

  This collection contains a sampling of collections of audio and visual materials from the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
• MIT Courseware- Women's and Gender Studies

  Click on individual courses to review the syllabus, calendar, lecture notes, interactive simulations, online textbooks, and assessments.
• OER Commons- Women's Studies

  The OER Commons is a single search source that pulls materials from multiple OER collections. Use the left-side menu to refine your women's studies resources search by education level, material type, media format, and conditions of use.
• Open Access Queer Studies Resources

  Supported by a Carnegie-Whitney Grant from the American Library Association, this resource repository provides access to open access journals, books, and digital collections.
• Women Working, 1800-1930

  "Women Working, 1800–1930 is a digital exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression. Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented in this online research collection from Harvard University."

• 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.
• College Open Textbooks

  Created by a collaboration between educational non-profit and for-profit organizations from over 200 colleges.
• InTech

  One of the largest open access publishers and distributors of books in the science, technology, and medical fields.
• MIT OpenCourseWare- Online 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.
• OAPEN Library

  The Open Access Publishing in European Networks provides access to free, peer-reviewed academic textbooks produced for the humanities and social sciences. Not all books are available in English.
• Open Course Library (Washington Community and Technical Colleges)

  Offers collections of course materials that cost $30 or less for 81 highest enrolled courses. Offers powerpoints, assignments, lectures and more.
• 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.
• Open SUNY 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.
• 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