Looking for materials to use in your classroom? Consider OER!
Open Educational Resources (OER) are guided by the idea that high-quality educational materials should be available to everyone.
OER are educational materials—everything from a single lesson plan to an entire textbook—that save students and teachers money because they are free to use, customize, and share.
OER are openly licensed, which makes it easy to personalize materials and infuse them with fresh, relevant content.
There are many types of OER materials available!
Materials from Virginia's Academic Library Consortium
Includes syllabi, assignments, and courses.
Free to stream videos
Places to find free to use images.
Evaluating OER is similar to evaluating possible textbook adoptions, like assessing the reading level and how well it matches your learning objectives. But remember that with open-licensed materials you have the flexibility to adapt the content to what works for you.
from: https://guides.kirkwood.edu/opentextbooks
The VIVA Faculty Textbook Portal is a catalog to assist Virginia public college and university faculty in finding and selecting open and affordable textbooks for their courses in one place. The Portal is part of a wide-scale Open and Affordable Initiative by VIVA to provide no-cost and barrier-free access to course curriculum resources for students and researchers. The Portal contains over 200,000 titles from VIVA's shared library collections, open access textbooks, and ebooks available for VIVA to purchase on behalf of public colleges and universities throughout the state.
VIVA Open is a collection of Open Education Resources adopted, adapted, and/or created by faculty and higher education professionals at Virginia institutions.
The following are free sites to watch online videos. Some sites have Creative Commons licenses, some are in the public domain, but some have copyrighted materials. Check the FAQs and About sections of the individual web sites to verify you can use the material before using a video in or for a course.
A collection of full episodes of CBS news program 60 Minutes.
A collection of free online courses from top universities around the world. Topics covered include art & design, business, humanities, and computer science.
A collection of shows and documentaries from the network.
A collection of more than 450 films by and about Native Americans ranging from 1925-2010.
A collection of historic speeches presented in video, audio, and text.
A collection of over 150 films that cover a variety of archeological topics and places.
Interviews with actors, directors, editors, and others who are in the television industry.
Themed collections from the BBC Archives of radio and TV programs, documents and photographs from as far back as the 1930's.
Interviews with designers, fashion films, and discussions of important fashion news.
Access to films, audio recordings, images, and texts related to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's.
An archive of all the C-SPAN programming that has aired since 1987. Programs from all three C-SPAN channels have been recorded and indexed for searching.
A collection of text, images, audio recordings, and moving images from a variety of American libraries, museums, and archives.
Digital archive of ethnographic field videos.
A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites.
Classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.
Videos for free courses offered through the Harvard Extension School's Open learning Initiative. These courses taught by Harvard faculty cover subjects such as art & humanities, languages, literature, and science.
A project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE) that provides high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students. Subjects include math, natural science, social science, and humanities.
This library contains over a million digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.
A collection of over 4000 videos that cover math, science (biology, chemistry, and physics), finance, and history. These videos are all about 10 minutes long and created to help students learn at their own pace.
A Collection of MIT course content available for free.
Free online public access to copies of archival film and video from several of MIRC's collections including Fox Movietone News, Chinese Film Collection, local television news, and USC Athletic Department.
Documentary and animated films that explore the world from a Canadian point of view.
A collection of educational and ephemeral films collected and hosted by UNC Chapel Hill.
Free access to a collection of introductory courses taught by distinguished faculty from Yale University.
Full length episodes of the PBS series American Experience.
Almost 1000 hours of original documentary footage chronicling contemporary art and artists. Features artists, art installations, exhibitions, and performances at galleries and museums.
Online access to select Frontline episodes from 1983- present covering a variety of subjects including health, education, and business.
Instant access to tens of thousands of classroom-ready, digital resources including videos, audio, photos, and even in-depth lesson plans for grades K-13. The site requires registration but all the content is free for educators, students and families.
Full length programs from the Public Broadcasting System.
Selected programs covering topics from ancient worlds to evolution to physics and math.
A collection of full-length and short films from the POV series.
A collection of programs featuring prominent doctors presenting the most recent research on numerous health issues.
A collection of short presentations and speeches presented by a wide variety of acclaimed individuals at the annual TED conference.
Over 50 films produced by the Thanhouser Company between 1910-1917. This collection was pulled together with the help of the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute, The National Film and Television Archive, The British Film Institute, The Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, and The Netherlands Filmmuseum.
An independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. Artists include Jasper Johns, Banksy, Andy Warhol, and many others.
Videos produced by the USDA about a variety of topics including current events, food safety, and nutrition.
Online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning.
Full length feature films and documentaries available to stream for free or pay-per-view.
from the University of South Carolina Library
A multidisciplinary digital library that includes all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR; spanning more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Access also includes more than two million primary source documents.
And, with the incorporation of Artstor's collections, JSTOR is now home to more than two million images.