Open Educational Resources: Quick List of Examples

Why does this matter? OER shifts classrooms away from costly, proprietary textbooks toward open, updated, shareable materials. You can copy, remix, translate, and refine without asking for special permission, which makes continuous improvement practical instead of painful. For quick orientation, look at open educational resources examples that are already working in the wild. On Curriki, for instance, you can share or download hundreds of K–12 OER items, then modify them to match your specific learning or teaching goals.

Since developers of online courses always face the challenge of creating and/or selecting high-quality content to meet these demands or in such situations, open educational resources can come in quite handy. Also, they are one of the most diverse and freely available resources. However, if you are not aware of using this platform correctly, you may find it difficult to search for the best match. This happens because in most cases OERs are unorganized on the Web.

Still, to overcome this particular issue and to assist you in taking the best advantage of OER platforms, here we will be sharing the five great open education resources that would help you in designing exceptional material with the help of the quality content available on these resources.

But before we dig further into the details of these great online educational resources, let just have a closer look at the OER itself and how it works!

What is OER?

Open educational resources, or OERs, are learning and teaching materials that are shared online and are freely available to everyone. This material can be used for many purposes, which may include translating, reusing, or modifying because the creator of the content has already granted permission to do so via open licensing.

Thus, open educational resources are the learning material and teaching that is available either under open licensing or in the public domain. All the open educational resources are created and contributed by curriculum designers, educators, school districts, and curriculum partners. Moreover, all of them are ‘mashable’ which indicates that teacher can easily choose resources (for example; animations, videos, lesson plans, photos etc), combine them or tweak them with some other resources, to develop their personal custom teaching tools. Not to mention, a lot of OERs are already mapped to standards.

The Uses of Open Education Resources

Developers, who use OERs, 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.

The Benefits of Using Open Educational Resources

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

To make adoption tangible, review open educational resources examples that mirror your context, then curate a small internal library so teams do not start from scratch each term. Useful examples of open educational resources include complete lesson plans, quiz banks with feedback, and media-rich modules that slot into an LMS. When you finish your own adaptation, document it with a short teacher’s guide and clear licensing so your work becomes part of the next educator’s toolkit. Over time, your department can maintain a shared folder of examples of OERs that highlight discipline fit, accessibility notes, and revision history—the practical path from discovery to teaching.

Open Platforms and Open Educational Resources Examples

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 which provide extensively, the latest and quality content material for you to develop a comprehensive and knowledge-based online course.

Since there is 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.

With that, let us not have a closer look at five major platforms of open educational resources which you might not know about:

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.

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.

Curriki

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

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.

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.

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 constitutes of more than 16,000 learning modules and objects.

How to Use OER

The following guidance outlines a practical, compliant process for adopting open educational resources (OER) within new or existing courses. The goal is to protect authorship and licensing, confirm instructional value, align with curriculum standards, and deploy assets in a manner that is sustainable inside your LMS, such as Open edX.

1) Verify the license and attribution requirements

• Identify the Creative Commons license on the resource page. CC BY and CC BY-SA permit reuse and adaptation with attribution. CC0 places the work in the public domain. NC restricts commercial use. ND prohibits derivative works.
• Record, in a consistent format, the title, author or organization, source URL, license type, and version or publication date.
• Display attribution within the course unit and maintain a central “Credits” page so obligations remain visible to learners, reviewers, and auditors. If the license is absent or unclear, select an alternative resource.

2) Evaluate instructional quality and technical fitness

• Accuracy and currency: verify claims, data, and terminology against authoritative references. Prefer resources with visible edit histories, peer review, or institutional stewardship.
• Pedagogical suitability: confirm that the resource supports the target outcome, includes opportunities for practice, and provides feedback that can increase the effectiveness of online learning.
• Accessibility: check for captions, transcripts, alt text, keyboard navigation, and sufficient color contrast.
• Technical integrity: favor open formats (for example, HTML, MP4, PDF with selectable text, CSV), stable URLs, and complete metadata. Avoid assets that require uncommon plug-ins or unvetted scripts.

3) Align to curriculum, standards, and assessment

• Map each OER item to course outcomes, competency frameworks, and prerequisite knowledge.
• Draft a short instructor note explaining when to use the resource, typical misconceptions, estimated time on task, and any materials required.
• Attach or adapt a rubric, a formative check, or a brief quiz so the resource connects to measurable learning, not only enrichment.

4) Implement OER within your LMS (Open edX LMS recommended)

• In Open edX, add resources as Units and Components: Video components with transcripts, HTML readings, Problem blocks for auto-graded items, and LTI components for external simulations.
• Tag Units with objectives and estimated duration. Set release and due dates that fit the overall learning arc.
• Create a discussion thread associated with the Unit to encourage questions and peer support inside the course context.
• Surface attribution and license details in the Unit header and on a consolidated acknowledgments page.
• Monitor completion rates, attempt data, and discussion activity using LMS analytics. Replace or revise items that exhibit low engagement or weak performance signals.

5) Localize, maintain, and document changes

• Adapt examples, names, and scenarios to local contexts and languages while preserving source meaning and credit.
• Preserve both the original asset and the adapted version in a controlled repository with clear version labels.
• Establish a review cadence to test links, refresh media, and incorporate instructor and learner feedback.
• Document what changed, why it changed, and when it entered the course so future cohorts receive the improved version and compliance reviews proceed efficiently.

Applying this process consistently converts open educational resources from ad hoc links into dependable course components. Faculty gain clarity on legal use, instructional fit, and maintenance, while program leaders obtain traceable evidence that OER adoption supports outcomes and quality standards within the LMS environment.

The Bottom Line

OER platforms are dynamically developing, and discussed above are just some of the many open educational resources’ examples.

The OER platforms are helpful in solving problems with the relevance of learning material and are cost-effective for educational institutions. Educators can access unique resources on these platforms along with creating and contributing to their own development, their students’ learning, and the education community.

To summarize, open educational resources are both digital and non-digital educational materials. This material is free of charge and can be distributed or copied without restriction or any limitation in terms of permission. Also, in a few instances, the material can be incorporated into an online learning course to suit different uses and contexts.

This great digital technology provides potential advantages of sharing, through which students and teachers around the globe get open access to exceptional teaching and quality learning content, thus advancing global education. Therefore, open educational resources are a peace of mind, and to use this extensive knowledge base, you don’t need to provide any compensation, including monetary.

So take the chance of discovering, presenting and teaching different ideas and subject matter by adopting any of the discussed open educational resources examples. This will not only showcase quality material to the whole world, but it will also raise the standards of various educational resources as it gathers contributors from all over the world. Nevertheless, OER platforms provide sustainable education that updates constantly and is completely available.