OER: Everything but the Textbook – LibraryBuzz | New York City College of Technology, CUNY

"We tend to hear a lot about finding textbooks that qualify as Open Educational Resources (OER). But many other materials also fall under the OER umbrella, such as syllabai, lesson plans, lecture notes, interactive modules, and even whole data sets. Open Courses Some institutions are making it possible for outside learners to access educational materials. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) introduced OpenCourseWare in 2001; the site now hosts materials from over 2400 courses taught at MIT, with an estimated total 300 million visitors.  This means that you can find readings, and supplemental materials across many disciplines at MIT – Geology, History, Ethics, and more. The section OCW Scholar is specifically designed for those pursuing Independent Study, and includes full video lectures along with course readings. Also check out OCW Educator for suggestions of how their openly-licensed materials might be used.  Exploring the Wide World of Open Content If you’re looking for something specific, you can use one of the OER repositories to search by item type, across many different institutions.  For example, the OER Commons links to Syllabi from various universities. This could be a great tool for generating ideas on how to teach a course, and instructors could potentially adopt key assignments or readings.   It’s also possible to also search by categories like Game, Data Set, Unit of Study, and others. If you’d like to search for other open courses, you can use this tool to look for them by subject or topic."