Open Educational Resources (OER)
What's an OER Repository?
There are MANY repositories, or collections, of OER materials. This Guide lists just the tip of the iceberg. A simple Google search for "OER repositories" will yield many more. As with any research on the Internet, try to vet your findings for reputable authors and affiliations. Here is a list of resources to try:
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Tips for finding good OER repositoriesFrom the Open Professionals Network
Repository: Cool4Ed
California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4Ed) The COOL4Ed.org website provides Course Showcases of free and open educational resources aligned with 52 CID courses; over 70 teaching ePortfolios; comprehensive accessibility evaluations; almost 5,000 free and open etextbooks within a collection of over 70,000 free and open educational resources.
Repository: Canvas Commons
Looking for built-out modules or courses, ready to adapt to your needs? Try looking in the Canvas Commons. You can access it within your course shell from the left navigation menu:
Modules can be downloaded directly into your course. Watch a video on Canvas Commons & Free Adaptable Layouts from the SDCCD Video Library to learn about importing from Canvas Commons.
Courses can also be downloaded BUT BEWARE you will need to do so into a NEW course shell otherwise you risk overwriting your existing course shell. Call Instructure's Canvas Faculty Support and ask them to create a new shell for you, THEN import the course cartridge it into that shell. See directions below:
HOW TO REQUEST A CANVAS DEVELOPMENT SHELL (Directions from City Online Mentor Aileen Gum)
Development Shell is also known as a Sandbox shell
- Contact Canvas Help 24/7 either by Phone or Chat:
- Phone support: (844) 612-7422
- Chat or use the “Help” icon on the left margin in your Canvas course.
- You can also use the SDCCD Faculty Support Desk Form
- Have this information ready:
- Your name
- 10-digit Employee Number
- Organization: San Diego Community College District
- Tell them the development shell is just for you, NO students will be in this development shell
- Name of course: DS-Coursename-YourName (Example: DS-English101Master-Agum)
Repository: SDCCD OER
SDCCD Online Learning Pathways staff have curated an OER repository:
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SDCCD OER Repository -- in CanvasFind open textbooks, repositories, videos and images.
Repository: ASCCC OERI Disciplines
The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges Open Education Resources Initiative (ASCCC OERI) has a Canvas course shell devoted to its activities. As of 2025, its discipline page has resources available for about 40 different subject areas, including Anthropology, Biology, Development & Early Childhood Education, Communication, Counseling & Student Success, Economics, English & Literature, Geography, History & Political Science, Math, Nursing, Psychology, and Sociology.
Open General Repositories
Openly-licensed content: Check for licensing permissions
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MERLOT"A free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community."
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OER CommonsContains thousands of examples of learning and teaching materials. The advanced search option allows you to limit to subject area, educational level, material type, media format, accessibility, and license type.
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Community College Consortium for OER: How to Find OERThis site is a brief overview of how to find OER in the Commons, with links to repositories.
Open-access content: Check for licensing restrictions
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Khan AcademyKahn Academy (or KA) provides video lectures on various topics including arts & humanities, computing, economics, math science, reading, and life skills. Many lectures have accompanying interactive activities and practice questions. The collection is searchable and browsable by general area and sub-topic.
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Open LearnThis site was created by the UK's Open University. The materials are made up of courses, articles, videos, interactives and more.
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OpenStaxOpenStax offers free, open-source, peer-reviewed textbooks for college courses. This site also has test banks, assignments, PowerPoint slides and more to go along with textbooks.
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TedEdEducational videos that can be "flipped" (or tailored) for a lesson plan. Many videos include assessments, links to additional resources, and discussion starters.
Open Initiatives by States
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Wisconsin OnlineTransitioning to WisTech Open in December 2025
Open Subject Sites - Humanities
Openly-licensed content: Check for licensing permissions
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Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL)Find OER for teaching many world languages.
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Knowledge Commons Works"Knowledge Commons is an open, adaptable collection of tools that support the human work of education and research and make that work more visible and impactful." --website description
Open-access content: Check for licensing restrictions
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Asian Art Museum - EducationLarge collection of Asian artworks, lessons, videos , and background information.
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EuropeanaOver 50 million "artworks, artifacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe."
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Google Arts and CultureThis site showcases content from cultural associations. You can explore the site by artists, mediums, art movements, historical events, historical figures, or places. Most of these resources aren't technically OER, but most are free on the web.
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Library of Congress Digital CollectionsGateway to the Library of Congress’s vast resources of digitized American historical materials; documents U.S. history and culture.
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Sentence Stable / Paragraph PaddockA "resource for students and instructors to encounter, consider, practice, and play with language choice" through "examples of various stylistic techniques at work."
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SmARThistoryA collection of videos and essays to support the study of art and cultural heritage.
Open Subject Sites - STEM
Openly-licensed content: check for licensing permissions
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AMSER: Applied Math and Science Education RepositoryMath and Science OER repository specifically for community and technical colleges; funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Science Digital Library.
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MyOpenMath"MyOpenMath is designed for mathematics, providing delivery of homework, quizzes, and tests with rich mathematical content. Students can receive immediate feedback on algorithmically generated questions with numerical or algebraic expression answers. And it can do so much more, providing a full course management system, including file posting, discussion forums, and a full gradebook, all designed with mathematics in mind."
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Open-iOpen Access Biomedical Image Search Engine
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The Visible Human Project - U.S. National Library of MedicineA public-domain library of cross-sectional cryosection, CT, and MRI images obtained from one male cadaver and one female cadaver.
Open-access content: check for licensing restrictions.
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BioInteractiveOffers "multimedia resources, including apps, animations, videos, interactives, and virtual labs" on biology, chemistry of life, ecology, environment, evolution, genetics, and scientific process.
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ChemCollective - Carnegie Mellon"The ChemCollective is a collection of virtual labs, scenario-based learning activities, tutorials, and concept tests."
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The Concord Resource FinderMany interactive resources for Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Space Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics.
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Digital Storytelling Assignment BankOffers assignments related to digital storytelling, in categories such as video, audio, web, visual, mashup, design, coding, animated GIFS, and more. Each assignment links to examples of the work that people have done in response to it.
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Encyclopedia of Life"The Encyclopedia of Life brings together information about all life on Earth—one web page for each species. But EOL is much more than 1.9 million species pages. It's an incredible resource for text, images, video, sounds, maps, classifications and more, all freely available online."
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Floss ManualsFree manuals and educational materials about free software.
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FreeBookCentre.netA large very well organized directory of computing related materials, which also includes mathematics, other STEM areas, and business. Many items are are not actually books--but could be lecture notes, syllabi, etc. No evidence that content is vetted, but authors are often affiliated with universities.
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National Science Digital Library - NSDLSearch for STEM related OER.
Tip: The Advanced Search allows you narrow by subject area, material type, and educational use (assessment, instructional, etc.) -
National Science Teachers Assn. Free ResourcesThis searchable database of science teaching resources includes college level materials.
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Organic Chemistry ToolkitLinks to OER from a prof at St Olaf College.
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PhET Interactive Simulations"Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery."
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Vision Learning"high-quality, accessible, educational content in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the introductory undergraduate level."
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WebWork"WeBWorK is an open-source online homework system for math and sciences courses. WeBWorK is supported by the MAA and the NSF and comes with a National Problem Library (NPL) of over 20,000 homework problems."
Attribution
Many of the links on this page are provided by Julia Nims, Scholarly Communications Librarian at Eastern Michigan University.
