Open Educational Resources (OER)
What are Open Educational Resources?
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, 2021).
UCalgary Services for Finding OER
Libraries and Cultural Resources offers two OER Adoption Services that teaching faculty and instructors can use to find OER for their courses. Find out more about these services below.
OER by Discipline Guide: University of Calgary
https://doi.org/10.55016/OEA/UCoer3
This guide is a reference tool faculty can use to find quality OER in their discipline through pre-curated lists of OER organized according to UCalgary's faculties, departments, and subjects. The OER within this guide have been evaluated or adopted by faculty, librarians, and other relevant parties across Canada. The LCR OER Support Team updates this guide periodically as new resources are identified, evaluated, adopted, and created at UCalgary.
Students may also find this guide useful for their studies as it includes discipline-specific OER along with more general writing, citation, research, and academic success support.
Visit the OER by Discipline Guide: UCalgary to locate potential OER in your discipline
Open Course Materials Matching Service (OCoMMS)
https://libguides.ucalgary.ca/guides/ocomms
The Open Course Materials Matching Service (OCoMMS) saves teaching faculty and instructors time searching for OER as we will do the searching for you. The OER Support Team will conduct the search to find potential OER that fit the course materials needs within a course. Following our search, we will provide a curated list of potential OER for requestees to evaluate for potential adoption into their course. This service can be used for established courses, as well as, new courses and programs.
Visit the Open Course Materials Matching Service (OCoMMS) Guide to learn more.
For an overview of all of LCR's OER services, visit the Open Education Services webpage
Creation and Hosting Services for OER at UCalgary
Open Education Alberta is a publishing service offered by post-secondary institutions across Alberta who have partnered together. Open Education Alberta is based in the Pressbooks Create platform and can be used for the development and publication of open textbooks, toolkits, tutorials, and more. It offers a variety of plug-in options, multimedia integration, and more to create interactive and engaging publications.
Open Education Alberta (Pressbooks) is supported by Libraries and Cultural Resources at UCalgary.
PRISM is a digital archive of the University of Calgary's intellectual output. Established and maintained by Libraries and Cultural Resources to manage, preserve and make available the academic works of faculty, students and research groups. The collection includes faculty publications, masters and doctoral theses, and research output from across Southern Alberta (taken from PRISM Library Guide).
PRISM is supported by Libraries and Cultural Resources at UCalgary.
Libraries and Cultural Resources supports open access and subscription-based journals through our journal hosting service. We provide web hosting for journals through the Open Journal Systems (OJS), developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). This service is open to any open access peer-reviewed journals whose editor(s)-in-chief is affiliated with a Canadian post-secondary institution (Taken from the Scholarly Journal Publishing Library Guide).
OJS is supported by Libraries and Cultural Resources at UCalgary.
Omeka S is a simple web publishing system that is used by hundreds of archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, and individual researchers and teachers to create searchable websites for digital collections.
At the University of Calgary, we are using Omeka S to allow students and faculty to tell stories about library or university collections, or academic works created by students themselves. Using Omeka S provides the opportunity for experiential learning beyond the classroom and the university community.
"Omeka" (pronounced oh-MEH-ka) is a Swahili word meaning "to display or lay out wares."
Omeka was developed by the Roy Rosezweig Center for History and New Media beginning in 2006. Omeka is a non-profit project; its funding comes from a variety of US agencies and foundations.
(Taken from the All About Omeka S page on the Digital Collection Projects Library Guide)
Omeka is supported by Libraries and Cultural Resources at UCalgary.
YuJa is the university’s video hosting/ content management system. It can be used as a stand-alone tool and also within your D2L course. YuJa allows you to upload and share your videos, create screen captures via a free desktop software and caption your content (Taken from the UCalgary eLearn Yuja page).
Yuja is supported by the Taylor Institute at UCalgary.
UCalgary Blogs is a collaborative publishing platform for use by the University of Calgary community, UCalgary Blogs is offered by the Taylor Institute Educational Development Unit as part of its efforts to extend effective blended and online learning on campus. You can create a personal blog, an official site, a course site, an ePortfolio, and more! (Adapted from the UCalgary Blogs Home Page)
UCalgary Blogs is supported by the Taylor Institute at UCalgary.
Additional LCR Course Material Services
Libraries and Cultural Resources offers additional services to support faculty and instructors with their course materials.
Reading List Service
The Reading List Service is a collaborative web app that simplifies the creation and availability of Course Reading Lists. The Reading List Service is integrated with the library collection and supports multiple interfaces to enable instructors to add materials to their reading lists from different sources such as the library’s collections, Open Educational Resource repositories, databases, websites, bookstores, and the instructor's reference manager. The service then provides students with direct access to the readings. Please connect with readinglist@ucalgary.ca to use this service.
View the Reading List Service Guide to learn more
Click on the image to view a video about the Reading List Service
Subject Librarian Support
Our Subject Librarians are able to assist you during your course planning. You are welcome to contact the Subject Librarian in your discipline by either booking a consultation or locating your Subject Librarian's contact information in our Staff Directory.
For more information on the teaching & learning services and activities of our librarians, curators, and archivists, visit our Teaching Support page.
Additional OER Services
Libraries and Cultural Resources (LCR) at UCalgary offers support and services for adopting, adapting, and creating open educational resources.
We offer consultations, workshops, and support for OER adoption, adaptation, and creation. Check out the LCR events page where you'll find OER workshops and events we offer throughout the year.
Please contact to us at oer@ucalgary.ca to learn more or book an appointment.
- OER Services, Events, and Resources at LCR [PDF Postcard]Downloadable PDF postcard listing services, events, and resources for Open Educational Resources at UCalgary's Libraries and Cultural Resources
- Open and/or Free Course Material Options [PDF Infographic]Downloadable PDF infographic summarizing some options for course materials that are free for students and faculty to access.
UCalgary and OER in the News
UCalgary's Students' Union are advocates of the use open educational resources in undergraduate courses. Read about their ongoing initiatives on campus in the articles linked below.