Open Educational Resources (OER)

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OER/ZTC Grant Funding

Each year, since 2015, Sask Polytechnic has offered an OER Grant funding program, which has been financially supported by the Saskatchewan government. The 2023 OER Grant program is currently open for applications.. The application deadline has been extended to January 31st, 2023.

If you have an idea for an open education resource or zero textbook cost strategy for your area, but don't know how to make it happen, contact the Scholarly Communication Librarian.We can discuss the supports and resources that are available to support your idea.

What are OERs?

Open educational resources (OER) include digital and print course content, open textbooks, teaching materials, learning modules, and more. Often, they are made available through copyright friendly means such as the public domain or a Creative Common licence:

Students and instructors can freely access, use, share, and modify OERs. David Wiley’s 5R Framework describes the ways OERs can be used to support teaching and learning:

OERs are growing in importance as the cost of textbooks and learning materials continues to rise. OERs make it easier for instructors to create, customize, and share learning materials and for students to access, use, and modify course content. Both students and instructors can benefit when cost is no longer a barrier to accessible learning materials.

OER by Discipline

Some repositories are organized by discipline, which is helpful if you are looking for resources for a class.

Sask Polytechnic - Sask Polytechnic has adapted a book published by BCCampus eBook directory that lists a wide range of open educational resources organized by discipline. It is a supplement to the OpenED resource listed below.

OER Textbooks

Prominent examples of OER textbooks include:

Open Library – eCampus is the home of OER in Ontario and includes 1209 resources.
LibreTexts – LibreTexts is a non-profit organization committed to freeing the textbook from the limitations and costs of traditional textbooks and includes almost 400 textbooks.
OpenED – Developed by the Government of British Columbia, OpenED is a collection of open textbooks.
OpenStax – Founded by Rice University, OpenStax is a collection of teaching materials for instructors.
Open Textbook Library – Postsecondary level textbooks put together by the University of Minnesota.
ROAD – The directory of open access scholarly resources from the ISSN International center.
SUNY Open Textbook Repository - Ready to adopt course and textbook catalog.
U of S Open Textbooks – The University of Saskatchewan’s open academic publishing platform, U of S Open Textbooks, features a growing number of titles.
University of Regina - Peer reviewed, openly accessible titles in Cree Language Acquisition, Business, Education and Nursing.

Saskatchewan Polytechnic is currently developing its own OER Repository.

OER Courseware & Supplemental Materials

These listings include college and university-level materials intended for instructors to use. Textbooks are included in the listings as well as course planning resources, evaluation tools, unit modules, including interactive activities.

Merlot – A curated collection of learning and teaching materials from the California State University
OER Commons – An online library with content covering a range of subject areas and educational levels
Oasis - An aggregated search tool to aid your discovery of Open Education Resources such as textbooks, learning materials and objects along with interactive simulations, podcasts, and videos.
Mason OER Metafinder - This OER discovery service searches 21 sources of open education resources.
HippoCampus - Search for video, animation and simulation content for middle-school to college level.

Pressbooks

Pressbooks is simple book production software. You can use Pressbooks to publish textbooks, scholarly monographs, syllabi, fiction and non-fiction books, white papers, and more in multiple formats including:

MOBI (for Kindle ebooks)
EPUB (for all other ebookstores)
designed PDF (for print-on-demand and digital distribution)

Pressbooks is used by educational institutions around the world as well as authors and publishers. You can access the Sask Polytechnic Pressbooks site here.

Sask Polytechnic has published a Pressbooks Guide to assist in working with the platform.

Learn More

The Saskatchewan Polytechnic Copyright Office is here to help students and instructors learn more about OER. Please do not hesitate to contact the Copyright Office at copyright@saskpolytech.ca or chat with us at Ask Us! Live for assistance.

We would like to thank the University of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan for allowing us to adapt some of their content for this page:

Source: University of Regina. (n.d.). How can Open Educational Resources help me and my students? Retrieved from https://www.uregina.ca/open-access/oer/index.html. [Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada Licence.]

Source: University of Saskatchewan. (n.d.). Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://library.usask.ca/copyright/general-information/open-educational-resources.php.

[Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada Licence.]

Source: University of Saskatchewan. (n.d.). Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://teaching.usask.ca/curriculum/open-educational-practices.php#OpenEducationalResources.

[Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada Licence.]