Open Educational Resources for Online Learning in 2026

TL;DR

• Open educational resources are published under open licenses — which in practical terms means anyone can use them, adapt them for their context, and share the result without fees or approval.
• That makes a practical difference: course development moves faster, institutions and students spend less, and keeping curriculum current stops being a licensing problem.
• The five platforms most teams work with — MERLOT, OER Commons, Curriki, Wikibooks, and Connexions — each cover different ground, from K-12 classrooms to university courses to workplace training programs.

Compare the Top Open Educational Resources

OER shifts classrooms away from costly, proprietary textbooks toward open, updated materials that can be copied, remixed, translated, and refined without special permission. For quick orientation, look at open educational resources examples that are already working in practice — on Curriki, for instance, you can download hundreds of K–12 items and adapt them to your specific teaching goals.

Since developers of online courses always face the challenge of creating and selecting high-quality content, open educational resources can come in very handy. They are among the most diverse and freely available resources out there — though if you are not familiar with the landscape, finding the right match can take some time. That is exactly what this guide is here to help with.

What is OER?

Open educational resources are teaching and learning materials freely available online under open licensing — meaning anyone can reuse, adapt, translate, or redistribute them without seeking additional permission. As UNESCO defines it, 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.”

All open educational resources are created and contributed by curriculum designers, educators, school districts, and curriculum partners. Most are “mashable” — teachers can select resources such as animations, videos, lesson plans, and photos, combine them, or tweak them with other resources to build their own custom teaching tools. A lot of OERs are already mapped to standards, which makes integration into existing curricula more straightforward.

The Uses of Open Education Resources

Developers who use open educational resources usually include these resources as an ad-hoc or formal addition to an existing program or curriculum. For instance, instructors sometimes use an online open lesson plan to include an enrichment activity for learners or may provide an extra practice material for the learner, struggling with the course or a particular concept.

Also, an instructor of a limited science lab may incorporate online open videos to create a clear and comprehensive demonstration of a complex experiment. Some online learning solutions have curated a huge collection of these materials into one digital library, making it easier for instructors to search specific material or lesson plans to incorporate into their online courses.

Similarly, many learning platforms are clearly shifting away from the expensive and conventional textbook way of learning and instead incorporating digital curriculum, created from all the open resources. While this digital curriculum can be updated as soon as the new material comes in, this might require more commitment on behalf of teachers to catalog and review material.

Workplace example: a corporate L&D team building a data literacy program uses OER modules from MIT OpenCourseWare as the foundation for several course units — adapting content to fit their industry context and adding company-specific scenarios, saving several weeks of content development time in the process.

How to Choose the Right Open Educational Resource

Not every OER is the right fit for every course. Before adopting a resource, it is worth checking four things:

• Check the license. Start with the Creative Commons label. CC BY and CC BY-SA allow reuse with attribution. CC0 means public domain. NC blocks commercial use. ND blocks edits.. No license listed? Choose another source.
• Confirm quality. Scan the source. Look for revision history, peer review, or institutional ownership. Then verify the facts. Outdated material spreads fast once a course goes live.
• Match the learner level. Compare the resource with your course outcomes and learner profile. The material should prompt action. A short task. A reflection. A quick problem.
• Check the format. Prefer open formats. HTML. MP4. PDF with selectable text. Test the link. It should load quickly and work on common devices.
• Test inside the LMS. Add the asset to a sample unit in Open edX, Canvas, or Moodle. Review layout, loading time, and accessibility. If setup takes too long, maintenance will grow each term.

Benefits of Open Educational Resources (for institutions, faculty, and students)

Why open educational resources matter to course creators

We have discussed the OER and its numerous uses, and we have understood that there are a variety of online educational resources for us to adopt. However, if you are a developer of an online course, then one of the first things that comes to mind is simple: why would online educational resources matter to you, and what distinctive benefit can you get out of them?

The promotion and even development of OERs are sometimes motivated by a desire to cut down the commodification of knowledge and to offer an enhanced or alternative educational paradigm. In practice, open educational resources give you modifiable, openly licensed content that you can translate, reuse, and improve, which speeds up custom eLearning development while keeping quality visible.

Core advantages at a glance:

• An educational platform open to everyone: materials can be discovered, copied, and remixed without paywalls, which broadens reach.
• Affordable learning, ideally free of cost: OER replaces expensive textbooks and course packs with open assets that students actually access.
• Try before enrolling: before even signing up, learners can sample units or activities to judge fit and level.
• Flexible study times: schedules are not restricted to semester calendars or weekly timetables, which supports working learners.
• Learn at one’s own pace: OER supports self-directed paths while preserving instructor guidance where it matters.
• Accessible from anywhere: no limited access to a particular college or school network; mobile-friendly formats help.
• Variety of study materials: videos, animations, lesson plans, simulations, and problem sets expand choice and fit.
• Reusability of intellectual capital: openly licensed content can be adopted and adapted semester after semester.

Benefits of OERs for faculty:

• Flexibility in curriculum: A faculty or educators, opting for OERs, can easily modify the resources in order to make them exceptionally suitable to what they need in the classroom and for their learners. With an open practice, educators are able to adjust their content, pedagogies, and approach based on their learners. Moreover, teachers can compare their own teaching materials with those of other teachers all over the world.
• Simplification of local adaptation: the increasing pool of OER not only offers freedom in selecting course material but also creates opportunities for new resources that can be adapted to fit the local context in terms of culture and learning needs. This is achievable without lengthy copyright negotiations or duplicating content development.
• Faster iteration and quality control: open formats invite small corrections, accessibility improvements, and alignment to standards without waiting for a new edition.

Benefits of OER for students:

• No additional cost: many students do not buy all assigned materials; using free OERs instead of traditional textbooks or course packs substantially reduces cost while preserving unlimited access to learning content.
• Improves student learning comprehension: within open educational practice, students in courses that use OER often report clearer examples, embedded practice, and better preparation for assessments.
• Test and compare before enrolling: open educational resources let prospective learners preview topics, compare syllabi, and understand expectations across institutions, which supports better study choices and higher success once enrolled.
• Anytime access and inclusivity: materials remain available after the term for review, and formats such as transcripts and captions support broader participation.

Getting started with concrete models

The easiest way to begin with open educational resources is to find examples that already work in a setting close to yours, instead of starting from a blank page.

• Review OER materials that mirror your context and build a small internal library so course teams stop recreating the same assets each term. Focus on resources instructors can plug directly into a course.
• When your team adapts a resource, document the change. Add a short teacher’s guide and the correct license so others can reuse the material.
• Over time, keep a shared OER folder with notes on discipline fit, accessibility, and revision history.

With steady use, OER becomes a routine part of how teams build and update courses.

Open Educational Resources Examples: Top Platforms & Repositories

When you aim at creating an online course platform based on open educational resources, you can have access to various open resources, accessible by the general public.

There are many platforms that provide extensive, the latest, and quality content material for you to develop a comprehensive and knowledge-based online course.

Quick list of popular OER sites

Since there are numerous OER examples and categories exist. According to the level of functionality offered by the open educational resources website, there are three major categories of open educational resources:

1. Directories – These provide a list of OER and links to resources that are available elsewhere on the Web
2. Platforms – Specific digital tools designed to “do” something with the OER
3. Repositories – Databases or collections of OER, usually ones developed by a particular institution.

MERLOT, OER Commons, Curriki, Wikibooks, and Connexions are among the most widely used open educational resources platforms today. Here is a quick overview before we dig into each one:

• MERLOT – peer-reviewed repository of multimedia learning objects for higher education
• OER Commons – an open network where educators from Pre-K to graduate level share and create course materials
• Curriki – a global K-12 community for sharing and discovering open learning resources
• Wikibooks – a wiki-based platform for building open textbooks and instructional guides
• Connexions – repository of modular, Creative Commons-licensed learning objects.

Here is a closer look at what each one offers.

MERLOT Content Builder

The MERLOT Content Builder is a website development and free webpage tool, integrated into MERLOT. The tool is directly accessible by members and by simply visiting their website’s homepage. The tool constitutes a range of designs which may include structures, portfolio, author guidelines, lesson plans, quality assurance, course redesign, teaching tips, online courses etc.

MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Teaching online) offer an easy and quick solution to deliver web-based content, which is hosted by the MERLOT and CSU. Additionally, the extensive OER search engine of MERLOT can easily be used to incorporate the resources of Content Builder. This tool offers uploads of maximum 10MB.

Example: an instructional designer building a business communication course can search MERLOT by subject, filter by peer-reviewed materials, and pull ready-made video lectures and assignments directly into their LMS.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a platform which is wiki-based that enables you for the development of accessible and simple open web content and that too, in a textbook form. I order to get started, You may go with their Sandbox, or you may sign in a free account as well.

However, the platform offers particular criteria for the material inclusion. The platform is for annotated texts, textbooks, manuals and instructional guides. All of this material can be used in a conventional classroom, a home-school environment, a respected and an accredited institution, and can be used in learning.

Example: a vocational training provider can supplement its in-house course materials with Wikibooks chapters on electronics fundamentals — freely available, regularly updated, and easy to link from any LMS.

OER Commons

OER Commons is one of the first comprehensive open learning networks where teachers and professors from Pre-K to graduate school can easily access their colleagues’ course material. Moreover, they can also share their own material.

Generally, OER Commons (OpenAuthor) is a huge platform which enables the development of new open content. Moreover, that content is easily indexed, within the search tool of OER Commons, to make it searchable.This tool offers a simple process to upload files and if you are well-known with huge platforms such as WordPress, this can offer a good experience and easy time in getting started.

Example: a high school science teacher can search OER Commons for a climate change unit, download a peer-contributed lesson pack, adapt it for their grade level, and publish the revised version back to the platform.

Connexions

Connexions is a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Content is licensed under Creative Commons. This learning object repository consists of more than 16,000 learning modules and objects.

Example: an instructional designer building a self-paced statistics course can assemble a full curriculum from Connexions modules — selecting, sequencing, and lightly adapting existing content rather than writing everything from scratch.

Curriki

Curriki is a well-known and leading K-12 (global) community for instructors, students, and parents to share, create, and search open learning resources which may improve the effectiveness of teachers along with students’ outcomes.

This open educational resource platform gives academics, educators, students, and parents a meeting ground to share educational material worldwide. Curriki provides an excellent solution to publish materials for the general public, and it also offers solutions for some expert reviews. The tool offers OER for technical education, arts, education, health, educational technology, media and information literacy, science, mathematics, and others.

Example: a primary school teacher preparing a digital citizenship unit can find a complete Curriki lesson pack — slides, discussion prompts, and a short quiz — and adapt it for their class in under an hour.

How to Use Open Educational Resources

1. Check the license first. Start with the Creative Commons license on the resource page. CC BY and CC BY-SA allow reuse with attribution. CC0 places the work in the public domain, while NC blocks commercial use and ND stops edits. Record the title, author, source URL, license, and date. Add attribution in the unit and on a central Credits page. If the license looks unclear, replace the resource.

2. Review quality and accessibility. Next, confirm the content accuracy using trusted references. Resources with peer review or institutional ownership usually age better. Also check accessibility: captions, transcripts, alt text, keyboard navigation, and color contrast. Prefer open formats and stable URLs.

3. Connect the resource to outcomes. Each OER item should support a specific course outcome. Write a short instructor note that explains when to use it and how long learners usually spend on it. Then attach a short quiz or formative check. This step ties the material to measurable progress.

4. Place the resource inside the LMS structure. Add the asset as a unit component. In Open edX, teams often use Video, HTML, or Problem blocks. Canvas and Moodle organize similar items inside modules. Include objectives and estimated duration. Later, review completion data and attempts in LMS analytics.

5. Localize and maintain the asset. Adapt examples for local context and language while keeping attribution intact. Store the original file and the adapted version in a repository with version labels. Teams usually review OER assets each term. They fix links, update media, and record changes in a short log.

The Bottom Line

Open educational resources platforms are developing rapidly, and the examples above represent just a portion of what is available. They address two of the most persistent problems in education: the cost and relevance of learning materials. Educators can access unique, up-to-date open educational resources, contribute their own adaptations, and build on the work of a global community rather than starting from scratch.

Open educational resources are free to use, distribute, and adapt under open licensing — and for course creators working within an LMS, they offer a practical shortcut to quality content without copyright friction. The key is knowing where to look, how to evaluate what you find, and how to document your use so the work you put in benefits the next person too.