Welcome to the Library’s Open Education Resources (OER) page. This page is designed to introduce faculty to the options available if they wish to adopt OER. Penn Highlands is a member of the Affordable Learning PA network.
Affordable Learning PA (ALPa) provides faculty with the opportunity to participate in professional development and networking all connected to implementing OER resources into courses and programs.
What are the benefits to adopting OER?
- Faculty can re-purpose, edit, or add to OER textbooks to customize for specific classes
- OER guarantees that all students will have access to the textbook on the first day of any class
- Textbooks only change when faculty want them to change, no automatic new editions
- OER textbooks can be downloaded and printed for students who need to have paper copies
- Some OER textbooks come with support materials such as test banks and PowerPoint slides
The following links will take you to collections of Open Educational Resources. If you have questions about using any of the resources below, please contact a librarian.
Open Textbook Library
– This OER collection is hosted by the University of Minnesota and is part of the Open Textbook Network (OTN). Penn Highlands is a member of the OTN so faculty will have additional access to materials and reviews. This collection consists of free textbooks created by college faculty.
Openstax.org – Openstax is a collection of high quality textbooks created by Rice University. These texts are also accompanied by online resources (PowerPoints, for example) to help instructors. Openstax focuses on general education classes.
OASIS – This is a large collection of a variety of OER materials, such as, textbooks, course materials, and sometimes entire online courses that faculty have made available for others to use. It’s being developed by SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library.
OER Commons – Power Library Lesson Plans (K-12) – The POWER Library OER Commons hub is designed to serve educators across the Commonwealth with high-quality, customizable lesson plans, and other resources, that directly correlate Pennsylvania’s elementary and secondary content standards to the resources provided in POWER Library.