OER Handbook/educator version one/Find/General repositories



A number of institutional OER projects stand out for the volume and quality of resources they have published. One starting point is the list of open courseware consortium members with active repositories that is provided on the OCWC site. The MIT OpenCourseWare project deserves special mention since it was the first large scale OpenCourseWare endeavor and has produced over 1800 courses so far. The materials are not designed for online learning, however, but rather as instructor resources, and often the important reading materials are not available as open or online resources. The Open University UK takes a different approach to OpenCourseWare and publishes materials specifically designed for online learning, but only offers some modules within its full courses freely.

Repositories of training and educational materials offer a range of resources developed by many different organizations and individuals for different subjects, educational levels, and purposes. This handbook has divided the list of general repositories into general licensing categories. These license categories are arranged from least to most restrictive. Sites under "All Rights Reserved" can only be viewed and used in the classroom, with no option to localize and remix and have been placed in the appendix. They are included in this handbook because they might be useful to readers and not necessarily because they epitomize OER.

Most repositories operate under a variety of licenses, so you should check the license of the individual object before use.

See the Licensing chapter for more information about licenses.