Library & Learning Commons: Copyright & OER: OER

OER Librarian

Kyle Montgomery

Email Me

Contact:

Library, Room 3021

(705) 524-7333

Chair, Academic Excellence

Marnie Seal

Email Me

Contact:

Library, Room 3021V

705-566-8101 ext 7651

Subjects: Copyright & OER, Faculty Resources

Terms of Use

Much of the material in this guide has been adapted from Lansing Community College (LCC) Library Research Guide on Open Educational Resources (OER) by Regina Gong and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and the and the CLO Learning Portal Faculty Copyright Toolkit, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Disclaimer
This site was designed solely for informational purposes for Cambrian College faculty and staff. All other users are encouraged to check and confirm the information with their institution.This site is prepared by library staff and is not reviewed by legal counsel.

Library Resources

Don't forget that you can use library resources for your courses, too! The library has license agreements that cover databases and ebooks. These agreements normally allow for emailing content and linking content through Moodle. Some may allow you to use the content as handouts or in course packs. Contact the librarian to determine what is allowed.

What is OER?

Open Educational Resources, or OER, refer to any teaching and learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open licence, such as a Creative Commons Licence or GNU General Public Licence, that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution with no or limited restrictions.

For more information about using OERs, check out this toolkit:

CLO Faculty OER Toolkit
This toolkit provides information and tools to help faculty and library staff across all publicly funded colleges in Ontario to understand, engage with, and sustain OER in their work and practice.

Finding OER

Entrepreneurship

Business Startup and Entrepreneurship: Canada – University of Prince Edward Island
Introduction to Entrepreneurship – Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Toolkit – BCcampus
Entrepreneurship – OpenStax

Business Mathematics

Business Mathematics – BCcampus
Business/Technical Mathematics – Bccampus
Fundamentals of Business Math – Ecampus Ontario

Business in Canada

Fundamentals of Business: Canadian Edition – Nova Scotia Community College
NSCC Fundamentals of Business - Nova Scotia Community College

Business Communication

Business Communication for Success – Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
Building Relationships With Business Communication – Atlantic OER [Dalhousie University]
Student Engagement Activities for Business Communications - Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Fundamentals of Business Communication Revised (2022) – BCcampus
Introduction to Professional Communications – Nova Scotia Community College
Advanced Professional Communication - Fanshawe College
Professional Communications – Ecampus Ontario
Business Writing Style Guide – Oregon State University

Business Law

Business Law I Essentials – OpenStax
Business Law: A Risk Management Approach - Idaho Open Press
Indigenous Perspectives on Business Ethics and Business Law in British Columbia - BCcampus

Business Ethics

Business Ethics – OpenStax
Business Ethics: 100 Questions – Boise State University

Management

Management – OpenStax
Conflict Management – Fanshawe College
Principles of Leadership & Management – Fanshawe College
Project Management – BCcampus
Project Management Fundamentals – Seneca College

Hospitality

Human Resources in the Food Service and Hospitality Industry – BCcampus
Practical Learning in Hospitality Education – University of Queensland
Basic Kitchen and Food Service Management – Nova Scotia Community College

Consumer Behavior

Introduction to Consumer Behavior – BCcampus

Media Communication

Media Communication, Convergence and Literacy – Enyonam Osei-Hwere, Patrick Osei-Hwere
Write Like a PR Pro - Mary Sterenberg (University of Ohio)
Organizational Communication – Granite State College
Theories of Communication – BCcampus
Trends in Digital & Social Media (V16) - Granite State College
Essential Communication Skills – Mohawk College

Music

CMUS 120 Fundamentals of Music - VIVA Open Publishing
Twentieth and Twenty First Century Music – University of Iowa
Fundamentals, Function, and Form - Milne Publishing

Art & Design

Understanding New Media Art – Open Oregon Educational Press
Introduction to Art Concepts – Santa Ana College
Origins of Contemporary Art, Design, and Interiors – Ecampus Ontario
Tutorials of Visual Graphic Communication Programs for Interior Design – Iowa State University
Business Communications for Fashion – Seneca College

Information Technology

Programming Fundamentals - Harper College Open Press
Patterns for Beginning Programmers – James Madison University
The Missing Link – State University of New York
Web Design Primer – Toronto Metropolitan University

Medical Terminology

Medical Terminology for Healthcare Professions: Ideal for first year health sciences students this resource define many of the common anatomy and physiology terms used in the field
Building a Medical Terminology Foundation: This Canadian resource explores and explains the common components and terms that are used in various health science medical terms.

Nursing

Open at Scale Nursing: This list of over 300 OER nursing resources was complied by eCampus Ontario.
Finding Evidence-based Information for Health Sciences Students: Designed to provide explore the process of designing and preforming a search of Health Science resources.
Clinical Procedures for Safer Patient Care: A valuable resource for students entering clinical. This resource provides students with easy to understand step-by-step procedures for common nursing tasks. The information contained in these procedures also use contemporary evidence-based data.
Leadership and Influencing Change in Nursing: This Canadian published resource focuses on providing new nursing students with the leadership skills needed by nursing practitioners.
Supporting Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities & Mental Illness: This Canadian resource can be used to provide new nurses with a series of practical checklists and resources that they can use to provide effective care to patients with a wide range of mental illnesses, and physical disabilities
Nursing Management and Professional Concepts: Provides first year nursing students with an introduction to common management techniques used by nurses and also discusses the ethical framework that should be used by practitioners when making decisions.
Nursing Virtual Case Studies: Lists a total of8 case studies that allow readers to explore and refine their clinical judgment skills.
Nursing Care at the End of Life: This source provides new nursing students with an in depth resource of preparing and delivering end of life care to patients.
The Scholarship of Writing in Nursing Education: 1st Canadian Edition: An invaluable resource for first year nursing student this resource provides readers with a complete walk through of writing nursing papers from the formulation of the research question to demonstrating to citing and referencing sources .
Documentation in Nursing: 1st Canadian edition: This book explores the needed skills and techniques nurses need to accurately and effectively document their nursing activities. Also references and discusses Canada specific legislation related to nursing documentation.
Introduction to Communication in Nursing
Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts: Depending on a Canadian's economic and cultural background they may face a unique set of health issues. This resource explores the unique health issues faced by certain groups of Canadians.
Northern & Indigenous Health And Healthcare: A fantastic resource for courses examining the unique health needs of Canadian remote and Indigenous communities.
Public Health Ethics: Global Cases, Practice, and Context: Explores the ethical theories and principals surrounding public health and provides a number of practical case studies.
Pathology: Explores the anatomical and biological roots of a series of common diseases and conditions.

Exercise and Fitness

Exercise Delivery: This highly interactive resource discusses how to properly preform various common exercises. Each examined exercise technique includes a number of pictures and videos discussing the proper techniques and forms. Each unit also includes a short series of self assessment questions for students.
Introduction to Exercise Science for Fitness Professionals: This resource provides an overview of human anatomy, biochemistry, and effective aspects of fitness programs.
Health and Fitness for Life: This resource provides an overview of various principles and theories of fitness and nutrition.
Biomechanics of Human Movement: Designed for first year bio-mechanics students this resource explores the basics of human movement and kinesiology and human movement.

Medical Laboratory:

Microbiology: A Laboratory Experience: Provides a series of instructional guides for a series of microbiology or bacteriology laboratory activities

Nutrition

Human Nutrition in a Canadian Context: This Canadian focused resource provides a basic overview of the theories, principals, and mechanisms underlying human nutrition. Also provides an overview of Canada's food guide and nutrition labels in Canada.
Human Nutrition: 2020 Edition: Outlines common nutritional principles and mechanisms. Also includes a section examining significant vitamins and nutrients along with their effects on the human body.

Wound Care

Skin and Wound Care: A useful resource for nurses or paramedics, this resource provides an overview of common injury/wound types along with common treatment and assessment methods.

Microbiology

Microbiology: Canadian Edition: Designed to be used as an introductory resource to common microbiology principles for health science students.
Microbiology 201: Explores common microbiology principles used by a number of health science disciplines.
Microbiology: Designed to provide an effective introduction to the common principles of microbiology.

Personal Support Worker

Foundations for Assisting in Home Care: Designed as an introductory resource for first-year personal support workers this resource provides incoming workers with a basic overview of the topics and principals used by support workers to deliver effective care.

Anatomy and Physiology

Anatomy & Physiology: An excellent resource for an introductory course examining human anatomy and physiology. Includes a large number of full colour reference images.

The following is a list is a range of OER materials/textbooks sorted by topic:

General Lists

OER by Subject Directory: This list of resources was compiled by the University of Regina and was designed with the goal of providing a list of OER resources to faculty that could be used as course material. Subjects covered include: science, health sciences, indigenous studies and business.
OER by Discipline Guide: Compiled and updated by BCcampus this resource contains information on a wide range of educational topics including; social sciences, law and justice, trades, and academic upgrading.
OER by Discipline Guide: McMaster University: While compiled by a University this resource contains a large volume of useful recommendations for health science, business, and science sources
OER by Discipline: University of Manitoba: Contains a large volume of materials on general arts courses

Environmental Studies

HVAC

Basic HVAC

Welding

Basic Blueprint Reading

Electrical

Carpentry

Building Maintenance & Construction: Tools and Maintenance Tasks (Interactive)

Trades

Chemical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Technical Writing

Open textbooks are free, online learning materials with Creative Commons licenses. Many of the collections will have links to the same books, but each will have a particular focus, and items you can't find in other collections.

Top Recommended

eCampus Ontario Open Library
This is a great place to look for Canadian OER resources, and many of the textbooks were created to support post-secondary education in Ontario. Many of the textbooks have been reviewed and vetted by educators across the country.
BCcampus OpenEd
BCcampus Open Education hosts and maintains the B.C. Open Textbook Collection which contains hundreds of high-quality resources selected for post-secondary curricula in British Columbia and Canada.
Pressbooks Directory
This directory provides an index of thousands of books published on this popular platform across 121 Pressbooks networks.
OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources, including textbooks, that can be filtered by material type and education level.

Other Great Sources

Directory of Open Access Books
The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access that meet academic standards.
Lyryx
Open textbooks for Business, Economics, Math, and Statistics.
MERLOT
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers. Use the search filters to limit for textbooks.
Milne Open Textbooks
Milne Open Publishing at SUNY publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed textbooks for use in higher education.
OpenStax
Initiated by Rice University, their free textbooks are openly licensed and peer-reviewed.
Open Textbook Library
Created by the University of Minnesota to support the development of high-quality open textbooks in various subjects.
Saylor Academy
Collection of freely available open textbooks for download, online reading, and sharing (scroll down to view titles by subject).
Wikibooks
An open-content textbook collection that anyone can edit.

OER repositories contain more than just open textbooks. All content featured within these pages is free but usage rights vary. Materials in these repositories are released under a Creative Commons license while some are in the public domain.

OER Commons
Funded by ISKME, OER Commons is a library of OER materials containing over 50,000 high-quality OER.
Open Course Library
Collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy offers practice exercises and instructional videos in a variety of subject areas.
Skills Commons
An open digital library of workforce training materials.
Lumen Learning
Supports faculty in identifying and selecting high quality OER, aligning these to learning outcomes, and assembling them to create OER-based courses.
Openstax
Contains textbooks, articles, supplements, and other learning resources that can be read online or downloaded for free.
MERLOT II
Free, peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials maintained by the California State University System.
California Open Online Library for Education (Cool4Ed)
Library of free open source textbooks and other materials from the State of California Higher Educations Systems.
Open Courseware Consortium
Free and open collection of high-quality learning materials presented in the form of courses.
MIT OpenCourseWare
A web-based publication of materials from thousands of MIT courses. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
AMSER (Applied Math and Science Education Repository)
Portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in community and technical Colleges.
ATE (Advanced Technological Education)
With an emphasis on two-year colleges, the National Science Foundation's ATE program focuses on the education of technicians for high-technology fields.
Internet Archive
This library contains downloadable free courses, video lectures, and supplemental materials from universities across the globe.
Wikimedia Commons
A collection of freely usable media files that anyone can contribute to.

Creative Commons Search Tool
Search websites for images you can share, use, and remix. Creative Commons allows creators of works to release them into the public domain or license works by placing some restrictions on their use.
Flickr
A photo sharing site where you can filter by license.
Getty Institute Open Images
Searchable database of Creative Commons licensed images under Getty’s Open Content Program.
Google Advanced Image Search
Limit your Google image search to images that that you can reuse.
Openclipart
All images in this website are all available copyright free since all are in public domain.
Pexels
All photos are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means the pictures are completely free to be used for any legal purpose.
Pixabay
Free images or videos that you can use anywhere.
Unsplash
High resolution photos with a CC0 (creative commons zero) license.
U.S. Government Photos and Images
A vast collection of photos and images from the U.S. Government, many of which are in the public domain and free to use.

TED Talks - TED’s videos are all Creative Commons licensed, unless otherwise indicated.
YouTube – Videos with a CC license can be found through Advanced Search options on both of these platforms
Vimeo - List of all CC licensed materials currently on Vimeo
Prelinger Archives : Free Movies - repository of public-domain materials and home movies
National Screening Room - Database of public-domain historical films maintained by the American Library of Congress
Pexels - Contains a large volume of contemporary public-domain videos and photos

Virtual Reality

Oculus Rift Virtual Reality
Search through Oculus Educational Apps for VR experiences labelled "free".

Free Music Archive
An interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads where creators have used Creative Commons licenses.
Jamendo
Jamendo is the first platform to legally share music for free from any creator under Creative Commons licenses. You can stream or download all the music for free.
Alexander Street
Alexander Street brings together peer-reviewed journal articles, books and music scores from the world ’s digital collections.
YouTube Audio Library
Music that can be used in videos.

Open data may include non-textual material such as map-based data, mathematical and scientific formulae, medical data, demographic data, financial data, and so forth. The collections listed below are all freely available to use, integrate, modify and manipulate to meet local needs.

University of British Columbia’s Open Data Collection - A repository of Canadian geospatial datasets, with some local datasets for the lower mainland and UBC campus.
Open Data Canada - Government of Canada’s open data sets, covering demographic, financial, map data, and more.
City of Greater Sudbury Open Data Portal - Open municipal data for the City of Greater Sudbury
EU Open Data Portal - A portal housing a variety of open data across EU policy domains, including the economy, employment, science, environment and education.
Data.gov - Comprises U.S. federal data with links to U.S. states, cities and counties with web sites that provide open data. Note that non-federal data available through Data.gov may have different licensing than open licensing.

Search for OER

The Mason OER Metafinder performs a simultaneous search across 21 different sources of open educational materials. For more information, visit the MOM website.

Related Organizations

BCcampus
BCcampus supports the post-secondary institutions of British Columbia with initiatives on Open education, shared curriculum and learning resources and technology-enabled teaching and learning shared services.
eCampus Ontario
eCampus Ontario is funded by the Government of Ontario to be a centre of excellence in online and technology-enabled learning for all publicly-funded colleges and universities in Ontario.
SPARC
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is a global coalition committed to enabling the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials by promoting Open Access, Open Data, and Open Educational Resources.
ISKME
The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) is an independent, education nonprofit whose mission is to improve the practice of continuous learning, collaboration, and change in the education sector.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work – on conditions of your choice.