Late last month the “Assessment in Action” blog at MSU ran the following post:

Open Education Resources are freely available materials, most of which are legal to reproduce, adapt, and/or distribute for educational purposes. Educators’ free access to this content is protected by fair use laws. Some benefits of using OER include increased accessibility/cost savings for students and instructors alike, availability of materials as soon as classes begin, expanded opportunity for collaboration, and increases in retention and grade point average.

Our Library Indexes and Databases are a great starting point when searching for OER. Our databases provide access to thousands of articles, periodicals, and other resources which qualify for free use.

Our librarians also suggest using the OER Metafinder to find free teaching materials. This is a comprehensive database which includes access to various OER including articles, modules, and in some instances, entire books.

Additionally, our institutional repository, BearWorks, contains access to free use materials including articles published by Missouri State faculty and MSU Graduate Theses. Any MSU graduate student or faculty member can upload their original materials to BearWorks. Contributors to BearWorks have the option to make their work available to MSU students/staff using a login, or they can make their materials open to the public.

Teachers may also make free use of physical books by scanning individual chapters, so long as the scanned and distributed portion is 10% or less of the entire book.

Our copyright expert at Missouri State is Joshua Lambert. He is always happy to answer any questions about copyright and free use.

Open Education Resources are a great way to increase engagement and accessibility in your classroom. For additional information, feel free to browse our OER webpage.