Open Educational Resources (OER)

OER are educational materials that are specifically designed by their creator/s to be openly available, and are often licensed to be re-used, re-mixed, and re-distributed. Open is not just about low cost (though that is an important benefit of using OER) but about the ability to take what others have created, customize it for your specific educational needs, and then share your creation with others.  

OER come in a variety of forms:

• Primary sources – Images, video, and sound recordings.  Some  sources are in the public domain, while others have been licensed as open by their creators. In addition, many texts that are in the public domain are available online/electronically.
• Learning content – created content that ranges from individual lectures, animations, and assessments to complete courses and textbooks.  

Content from University of Oklahoma Libraries – http://guides.ou.edu/oer

Don’t Forget Copyright!

This guide contains open educational resources meant for reuse, but it also contains other freely available sources that may not be available for reuse. Before reusing, please check that the source is intended for reuse. 

Just because something is open access or freely available on the web does not mean it isn’t protected by copyright. This includes images!

• FactCheck.org
  • FactCheck.org is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding. FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.” – FactCheck.org 
• Snopes.com
  • ​The Snopes.com web site began “in 1994 as an expression of his interest in researching urban legends that has since grown into the oldest and largest fact-checking site on the Internet.” – Snopes.com
• Washington Post Fact Checker 
  • ​The Fact Checker “first started on Sept. 19, 2007, as a feature during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Washington Post revived it as a permanent feature on Jan. 11, 2011. The purpose of this website, and an accompanying column in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post, is to “truth squad” the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local. It’s a big world out there, and so we rely on readers to ask questions and point out statements that need to be checked. But we are not limited to political charges or countercharges. We also seek to explain difficult issues, provide missing context and provide analysis and explanation of various “code words” used by politicians, diplomats and others to obscure or shade the truth.” – Washington Post Fact Checker 
• PolitiFact 
  • PolitiFact is a “fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics. PolitiFact is run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, an independent newspaper in Florida, as is PunditFact, a site devoted to fact-checking pundits. The Tampa Bay Times is owned by the not-for-profit Poynter Institute. The PolitiFact state sites are run by news organizations that have partnered with the Times. The state sites and PunditFact follow the same principles as the national site.” – PolitiFact.com