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Remote Learning at Jenks: Open & Free Resources

Jenks Library is ready to support your remote research needs.

Free Publisher Resources

Free Publisher Resources

Cambridge

Cambridge University Press has made available a collection of free Coronavirus book chapters, blog posts, and articles.

JSTOR

JSTOR has released a set of 26 journal archives in Public Health, making them openly accessible through June 30, 2020. In addition, they are partnering with publishers to make available over 20,000 ebooks. Please see this list of all Open Access and Free resources provided by JSTOR during this time.
Additionally, until June 30, 2022, our access to JSTOR archives has been greatly expanded. Access to all unlicensed collections at no cost for participating academic institutions that currently license some, but not all, JSTOR Archive and Primary Source collections. More than 25,000 books available at no charge for JSTOR participating academic institutions and secondary schools that do not participate in our books program.

Ohio State University Press Publications

“For the duration of this crisis, all Ohio State University Press monographs, and the linguistics textbook language files, will be open and free to use through the Ohio State University Libraries’ Institutional Repository, The Knowledge Bank.”

Project Muse

Project MUSE offered over 2,000 open access (OA) books and a few scholarly journals from several distinguished university presses and scholarly societies. As of June 30, 2020, Project Muse is not longer making these resources publicly available.

RedShelf

RedShelf is a provider of digital instructional resources.  They are providing free access to digital textbooks to students from nonprofit, semester-based colleges and universities through May 25, 2020. As of May 25, 2020, RedShelf is no longer providing free access.

University of Michigan

University of Michigan Press has made some content in the University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection (UMP EBC) open access and free to read.


OER

What is OER?

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. 

Source: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

For more definitions of OER, see the Creative Commons Wiki.

Important Features

  1. OER can either be in the public domain, or under a more lax intellectual property license.
  2. OER can be revised, remixed, added upon, translated, and then shared again to meet different needs.
  3. OER can take many forms, such as: syllabi, lesson plans, videos, software, tests, teaching techniques, group activities, writing prompts, textbooks, learning modules, experiments, simulations, and course designs. There are no platform restraints.

Source: The Review Project

OER Websites and Search Tips

Instructors can find OER in a variety of resources. Most OER organizations or collaborations have a database or central list of resources that faculty have added. Some databases also feature annotations or faculty feedback. Additionally, many disciplines have their own OER websites. The list below is not comprehensive but can instead be used as a starting point for faculty doing interdisciplinary work or work in any discipline. Remember that not all of the learning materials in these repositories and sources are OER for modifying but most of the content is freely available under Fair Use and/or with attribution.

General Education Search

Recorded Lectures & Video Tutorials Search

Open Textbooks

Modular Course Components

Complete Courses

OER and OCW Search Engines

Math

Humanities

Language Learning

Sciences

Social Sciences

Health

Tips for Searching OER:

  1. Use the advanced searching feature if there is one. This will save you some time and limit your search.
  2. Start with broad terms (ex. disease instead of cancer) and then narrow.
  3. As you narrow, think about disciplinary language. Is there something else this topic might be referred to as?
  4. If you still aren't getting good results, try to start with the browsing feature (even if it's very broad). Sometimes the term your searching isn't used but you still know it would be under a broad subject like "humanities" or "writing".

Also, see below for an infograpic which visualize the process of searching for OER.
*Note: this infographic was adapted and modified from the University of Texas at Austin's original infographic. For more information, see their Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning website.

Infographic about seaching for open educational resources


Media Streaming Services

Media Streaming Resources

Jove

Jove is offered videos and course content for biology and social psychology. As of June 15, 2020, Jove no longer offers free access to these products.

American Experience

250 films produced by PBS that document the American experience

folkstreams.net

A national preserve of documentary films about American roots cultures

TED Talks

1,700 talks on "ideas worth spreading." 

Open Culture

675 open movies, in addition to a number of audio books, open courses, ebooks, and textbooks.

Open Video Project

Thousands of open videos hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill