LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: How to Find OERs for your Teaching

How to Find OERs for your Teaching

Before search for OER, you need to be clear on what you are looking for. What you find is very much dependent on your search term (keywords) and search engine / repository which you use.

Questions to ask before searching include:

what exactly am I looking for
what format do I want
how do I want to use the content
how recent must it be
who is the audience - school pupil, undergraduate, postgraduate
what are the key terms or concepts or keywords
is there an authoritative author on the topic whose name I can use

Planning your search strategy

decide on the keyword and keyword combinations - but do not be too specific
some sites provide options to filter the results in various categories, such as:
- teaching levels
- results which allow for changes or adapation (in terms of the CC license)
- media types
- license types

Registering

Before searching for OER on a particular site, search engine or repository, it is recommended that you register on the site so that you can get optimal benefit with regard to content. By registering you will get the advantages of:

regular alerts and updates
storing search results on the site for later use
participating in online discussion groups

Approaching the Search Engines or Repositories

•Searching takes time and you seldom find what you want immediately – you may have to redo searches and use a variety of other search engines

•Searching on OER search engines is not as precise as when searching on commercial databases which the library subscribes to

•This take a lot of time, so do not leave it for the last minute

•Take time to look at the search screen and do not be afraid to experiment

•Searching is subjective and there is no hard and fast rule

Basic principles of using the main search screen on a search engine

•Each search engine has its own search screen layout

•Before you start to search it is recommended that you see if you can register on the site

•Spend some time on the site so that you can see the various search filters you can use in order to find the content that you want

•The search screen on most search engines allows you to refine or filter your search according to:

education level (for example, undergraduate, postgraduate)
material type (for example, videos, games, quizzes, textbooks0
media format
conditions of use in terms of the CC license

•It is recommended that you use the Advanced search option if provided

See the Tab - Selected Search Engines and Repositories for Teachers

Please see the following selected sites as a point of departure in finding suitable teaching resources.

See the tab Resource on UnisaOpen - Finding OERs for further sites.

MERLOT
This is a free and open online community of resources designed for faculty, staff and students of higher education to share their learning materials
OER Africa
This is not a search engine for African content, but provides access to various OER search engines and repositories – content still has to adapted, remixed and made relevant for Africa
OER Commons
Major content partners collaborated to provide a single point of access through which educators and learners can search across collections. Provides descriptive information about each resource. These resources are publicly available for all to use mainly through Creative Commons licensing
MITOpenCourseWare
This is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.

UnisaOpen's site Finding OER is also good option. Take time to browse through all the resources listed on this site this so that you are familiar with what each site can offer as well as the enormous variety of formats and types for your classroom.