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OER, a part of the global open content movement, are shared teaching, learning, and research resources available under legally recognized open licenses-free for people to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. Why are OER important? High-quality OER can save teachers significant time and effort on resource development and advance student learning inside and outside the classroom. Further, open sharing of resources has the potential to fuel collaboration, encourage the improvement of available materials, and aid in the dissemination of best practices.

Below find sites that collect or search for open resources, including open textbooks, open courseware, and other OER. Hover over each link for a brief description. If you have a favorite site you don't see here, please leave us a comment at the bottom of the page.

Reclaim Open Learning is an innovation contest, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, the Digital Media and Learning Hub, and the MIT Media Lab, with a humble mission. We want to find the five best examples of innovation happening right now in higher ed. The best of truly open, online and networked learning + The knowledge and expertise represented by institutions of higher education = Reclaim Open Learning.

"I have argued the futility of continuing to call the connectivist-style online courses by the term MOOC. In popular culture MOOC means Udacity, Coursera or EdX, and Andrew Ng's keynote on Wednesday showed the tone-deafness of the dominant paradigm. At #OpenEd13 debate continued among the group of experts (and this conference was full of experts) regarding how we properly define a MOOC, akin to the debate at Educause where Mathieu Plourde argued that every term in the acronym is negotiable. My argument at #OpenEd13 is that such thinking is counter-productive to the political and cultural conversation about distance, online and open education: those of us in that world are still arguing about the definition, but in the mainstream the ship has sailed, and we need to accept that the term MOOC no longer means what it did in 2008."

"Open educational resources，O.E.R are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or creative common area and are freely available to anyone over the Web. They are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and range from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games. There are more resources about Open Source Multimedia and Open Content Curricula."

"I am ecstatic that one of my articles has been made officially free-to-access. I am excited that a publisher is willing to promote my article that challenges much of mainstream academic publishing. And I respect that a publisher already has systems in place to allow some form of openness (in the form of author manuscripts made open) beside the model that brings them money, and that moreover, they choose some articles to make them open access from their own site, at no cost to the author."

"In the "What is Open Pedagogy" section, Robin DeRosa and Rajiv Jhangiani resist defining open pedagogy and encourage contributors to understand that the concept is continually changing shape and under negotiation. For these authors, open pedagogy is "a site of praxis, a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the development of educational practices and structures." They encourage consideration of hopes and aspirations for education rather than seeking a solidified definition."

"In essence, inclusive and open pedagogies are rooted in empathy and require that we take a humanistic approach in creating learning experiences. Empathy creates room to value multiple viewpoints. And when learners are not treated as "others," trust can be established. As empathy, trust, and respect become more prevalent, learners find the confidence to increasingly participate, engage, and take more ownership of their development and their learning. In this way, inclusive pedagogy is open, and open pedagogy is inclusive."

" I was a bit concerned that some readers may have gotten the impression that I was saying it was ok to "Be Awesome Instead" of being open. That was absolutely not the point I was making. Being open - truly open - is absolutely critical for reasons I will describe below. The point I was trying to make in my post is that we should be awesome instead of being whiny; we should be contributors rather than naysayers."

Partnering with Lumen Learning, a Portland, Ore.-based company that helps educational institutions integrate open educational resources into their curricula, TCC plans to offer a textbook-free associate of science degree in business administration based on Lumen's Textbook Zero model. For students who pursue the new "textbook-free" degree, the total cost for required textbooks will be zero. Instead, the program will use high quality open textbooks and other open educational resources, known as OER, which are freely accessible, openly licensed materials useful for teaching, learning, assessment and research. It is estimated that a TCC student who completes the degree through the textbook-free initiative might save one-third on the cost of college.

In October 2011, the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges launched the Open Course Library, a collection of high-quality, low-cost educational materials to correspond with the 81 largest-enrollment courses in the state. The first 42 courses are available immediately, and the remaining 39 are slated for development in 2012 and release in 2013. In conjunction with the release of the first 42 courses, the Student PIRGs conducted this informal study to evaluate just how much the Open Course Library could reduce costs for students. Based on a survey of 22 of the program's 42 course authors, all of whom had agreed to adopt the materials in their own teaching, we have preliminary estimates for the impact of these courses.

Mr. Shirky said. "The thing that drives me craziest in conversations with large institutions about large data sets is they want to know in advance what will happen. Why should we open up our data? To which the answer is, you open up your data to see where the value is. It's the value you can't even predict until you try it that you get back."

"I'm delighted that there's some very smart and committed people working on the technical side of the Open Badges ecosystem. For example, yesterday's community call (which unfortunately I couldn't make) resurrected the 'tech panel'. One thing that's really important is to ensure that the *user experience* across the Open Badges ecosystem is unambiguous; people who have earned badges need to know where they're putting them and why. At the moment, we've got three services wrapped up together in badge issuing platforms such as Open Badge Academy:"

"Today it was about a LOOC. Yes that is right, instead of a Massive Open Online Course it is a Little Open Online Course. The University of Maine is experimenting with opening up some courses for free to between 2 and 7 students. These students will be treated as any other student in the class with the same expectations and opportunities to complete assignments and exams if they wish. However, they will not receive credit for their work. They can decide to become a paying student before the normal add/drop period ends."

The Utah Open Textbook Initiative (UTOT) began in 2010. From a small pilot involving less than 10 teachers and three grades, UTOT has grown to a statewide program for grades 7 - 12 that improves science learning and drastically reduces the cost of providing every student with access to quality science curriculum. This whitepaper describes the UTOT process for successfully creating and adopting open science textbooks.

The first step to make a collection open is to apply an open license, but that is where the story begins. Openness to collaboration and to novel forms of user engagement are essential if cultural heritage institutions are to realise the full potential of the internet for access, innovation and digital scholarship.

"BCcampus organized an open textbook summit again this year (the first one was last year). I attended, because I'm writing my own open textbook on 'Teaching in a Digital Age.' BCcampus has published its own blog post on the lessons learned, but I came away with something different, from a potential author's perspective."

The promises of Open Educational Resources (OER) include increased access to education, reduced costs for education, enhanced collaboration, and efficient course design. Whilst these are all certainly possible, there are strong practical considerations to Open Educational Practice (OEP). This session will consider the role of OEP in teaching and learning at USQ, explore the challenges of engaging with openness, and offer some practical starting points.

"This book is a practical guide to adapting or creating open textbooks using the PressBooks platform. It is continually evolving as new information, practices and processes are developed. The primary audience for this book are faculty and post-secondary instructors in Saskatchewan, Canada who are developing, adapting or adopting open textbooks at the University of Saskatchewan. However, there may be content within this book that is useful to others working on similar Open Educational Resource initiatives."

"A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources. This is a first edition, compiled by Rebus Community, and we welcome feedback and ideas to expand the text."