Open Educational Resources

What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.” (UNESCO) They can include full courses, course materials, textbooks, streaming videos, software, and a range of other tools used in teaching.

What makes these resources unique from their more traditional counterparts is their open licensing. Open, or Creative Commons licenses allow for teaching and learning materials, including textbooks, to be shared, altered, translated, or even compiled into completely new resources (Wiley).  Having that freedom can open up new opportunities to use a variety of free, quality materials in your teaching that might otherwise be difficult to access or alter legally.

Want to learn more? Check out The OER Starter Kit,, which features five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER, and is primarily designed for those new to open education.

What does "open" mean?

The "5Rs," a framework of rights identified by David Wiley, explains how open educational resource licensing works. Authors are able to:

• Retain the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
• Reuse content in a wide range of ways
• Revise the content itself, e.g. translating the context into another language
• Remix the original or revised content with other content to create something new
• Redistribute copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with othe

Why are OERs significant?

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Strategic Vision, It Takes a Volunteer, calls upon members of the University community to Cultivate the Volunteer Experience by provid[ing] learners at all levels with opportunities to engage in rich learning and in scholarship that is collaborative, inquiry-based, experiential, affordable, and relevant." While advancing UTK's mission of empowering learners across all ages and backgrounds, OERs can contribute to both faculty and student success while empowering creativity, innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration and reducing the cost of a college education.

"Students learn more when they have access to quality materials. The rapidly rising cost of textbooks in higher education has left many students without access to the materials they need to succeed. Studies show that 93% of students who use OER do as well or better than those using traditional materials, since they have easy access to the content starting day one of the course" (SPARC).

Finding OER

Below is a short list of OER repositories available for finding resources for use in your courses. Please check back regularly, as this list will continue to be updated. Tip: You may be surprised what you can find using Google or Creative Commons Search.

Have a recommendation to add? Email libteach@utk.edu.

Have questions about finding OER or Libraries' materials in your course? Visit our Subject Librarians page for a list of contacts.

Adapting OER

​Open Educational Resources are often useful in their original state, but there are reasons why they might need to be altered for use in your course. For example, you might want to add information you've used in past courses you've taught on the subject, or the materials you are accessing might need updating to include the latest findings in your field. For images or PDF files, you may want to make the resource more accessible for the visually impaired, or to translate the resource into another language (Green-Hughes).

Remixing resources in this way can be useful, but may not always be necessary. Skimming reviews or evaluating the resource yourself may show if there is any need for modification or if the resources are useful for your courses as is.

Adapting Open Textbooks

Like other open educational resources, open textbooks may benefit from alteration before being shared in your courses. Removing chapters which are irrelevant in your course or adding more information in areas of the text which may be out of date are some things to consider when weighing the convenience of open textbooks against traditional textbooks. 

By having the ability to remix or downsize an open textbook, you can ensure that the text being used in your course is exactly what your students need.  Further information (step-by-step directions) can be found here. 

UTK Resources

The UT Libraries joined the Open Education Network on behalf of the university in 2016, helping us work with other member institutions to support the adoption and creation of open textbooks.

Attribution: Much of the content in this guide was adopted and adapted from guides created by Rachel Caldwell, former UTK Librarian. The page is undergoing updates during Summer 2024, so please check back regularly for more content.

For questions: Please email libteach@utk.edu.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.