INVEST Africa/OER

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Sources of Open Education Resources

The following sites provide a wide range of resources that are free to use and share for educational purposes.

It is important that you understand the various license conditions which these materials may be subject to. Most of them simply require attribution - acknowledgement of the original author or source.

Most of them allow you to adapt or change the content to your local context - again with acknowledgement of the original author/ source. If you do this, then you must also license your customization, adaptation or derivative work, as the same license as the original.



Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
TVET OERs

Find resources and materials and use them. Freely. Welcome to the TVET collection of openly licensed educational resources (OER). This collection only covers the TVET priority subject areas which are: foundation courses (english, maths, science including communication, research and study skills), emergency response, energy efficiency, tourism, health, ICT and transportation.


Bookboon
Free text books!

A collection of over 500 good quality eBooks on various subjects. Apparently written mostly by UK university staff. Lots for business subjects including a range of video lessons in Accounting. And, some travel guides too! They are completely free and downloadable in PDF format. The catch? - the books contain some adverts for companies and universities - but you can ignore them if you want to!

BizEd
Business subjects

An extensive resource for business, economics, accounting and banking. Unfortunately, it is not clear what can be copied and used freely and what services they restrict or charge a fee for access - lots of small print!. They have not used one of the global licenses that would help us to know easily, and navigating the site is more complex than it should be. So, why is it on this list? Try this resource interactive supply and demand and you will see why it may be worthwhile! It appears though, that if the material is in their Learning Zone then it can be used freely.

College Open Textbooks Community
A list of sites offering open text books and other OERs.

This takes you to another Ning site focusing on OER materials in the form of textbooks. With the prices of texts skyrocketing this could prove to be a valuable site.

Commonwealth of Learning
Various Resources

The COL website provides a wealth of information about open and distance learning and the use of technology in education. If you search for resources you will find the OER course materials developed with partner institutions.

Compadre
Open Source Physics

Many of the simulations you will find here need a program called Java to be running on your computer. It is usually automatic with Microsoft Windows 7, but if you have trouble, contact your computer support person to check or install it for you.

Connexions
This a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) A collection of food security resources.
Electrical Engineering NPTEL-India has made available 50 courses. (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Engineering Resources This is a collection of engineering OERs from multiple locations and repositories.
Gender & Entrepreneurship Toolkit A useful toolkit published by the International Labour Organization. The toolkit is on the INVES Africa community learning network (under the Gender TAB)
Jorum
Learning and teaching resources, shared by the UK Further and Higher Education community.
Khan Academy
Mainly mathematics

This has an extensive collection (2000+) of screencasts designed to look like a blackboard. The teacher talks over what is being written on the board. There is mathematics from foundation to calculus and other categories for chemistry, biology and some on accountancy. Well worth a look. Using Jing! you could replace the american teacher's voice with your own, either in English or a language appropriate for your learners.

Merlot
Business and Humanities

This is an extensive resource of online teaching and learning materials. It is free to become a member, and is well worth spending some time learning to search for the resources you are looking for.

MoodleShare
Shared Moodle Courses

A variety of good Moodle courses that can be downloaded and used freely. I wasn't able to check them all, but they seem to be available under the Creative Commons license Attribution - Share Alike. There is even a course for teachers on using Moodle for face-to-face blended learning!

NLN Materials
Many vocational areas

There are over a thousand 'learning objects' here. You can go through them online to see if they are of interest. They are in a special format - you cannot download and just play them. The easiest way to play them is with Moodle

OER Africa
Developed in Africa!

This site provides access to a range of African OERs in specific fields - Agriculture, Health, Foundation and Teacher Education. Foundation skills include Communications and Numeracy which many of your institutions cover. There are many high quality, relevant resources available here for you to share.

Open Learn (UK Open University)
They have 500+ courses on their Moodle site. If you create a free account with them, you can join the courses and download them! There are several download options. One of them is to download the entire course in Moodle format - just add to your own Moodle! Many of the courses are specific to the UK eg a course on the Scottish school curriculum. However, there are a few that should be of interest to CLN members.
Peer Resources (CLN)

CLN Peers sharing resources

Read the comments on this CLN page for additional resources provided by CLN members.

Phet
Physics/ Science Simulations

This is a project run by the University of Colorado, supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. There are lots of good quality simulations. But, the best part is - you can download the whole site! This means you can run it on a laptop or network, or even within your institute Moodle site. You can also put it on a CD and would be a useful resource for distance learning students without access to the Internet.

Sophia Open Content
Various Resources

This site is now some few years old, and the project is no longer running. Although there are only 8 courses, some of them may still be useful. They have been published as web sites, and you may need to ask your ICT support person to download/ set it up for you. It is possible to get them to run from within Moodle.