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Faculty Guide to Open Educational Resources: OER Home

Open Education Resources (OER) Defined

"Open educational resources are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner.  Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, game simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world."

-Hewlett Foundation

LibGuides for Students

See what OER we currently using in our courses.  Check out our LibGuides for students where you will find information on OER for our students, course specific OER and additional tools to help our students succeed.

OER Tutorials

Tutorial provided by Algonquin College that gives an overview of OER, copyright, discovery and usage.  Perfect for anyone who wants to learn more!

Finding Free and Open Resources, created for USG faculty, is a wonderful tool to help anyone learn more about OER.

OER at Nicolet

OpenNicolet - Affordable Learning Experiences

Nicolet College's objectives in the utilization of OER materials include:

  • Improved student success through access and affordability
  • Improved teaching and efficiency though the ability to focus, analyze, augment and evolve course materials directly aligned to program/course learning objectives

OER Benefits & Challenges

For Students

  • Money saved!
  • Access increased
  • Resources broadened
  • Review available
  • Engagement increased

For Faculty

  • Eliminates frequent textbook updates
  • Constantly current
  • Can tailor learning materials to your course
  • Expanded learning and sharing network

For Students

  • Could be access barriers
  • Here today, gone tomorrow
  • Varying technology skills
  • Forces use of internet-based materials

For Faculty

  • Time
  • Demystifying licensure
  • Fighting the fear of the unknown
  • Widely varying quality of material