Individual Project Sites

There are individual, isolated OER available on websites scattered throughout the internet. While a Creative Commons Search (see above) can find some of these materials, it will not find all of them. For OER that can't be found through the Creative Commons search engine, use a traditional search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc.) with the keyword "free" or "open" along with the type of resource you're looking for. (see Search Engine section for more information).

If you use OER from an individual site, consider writing an e-mail to encourage the content creator. You may also want to point them to appropriate repositories they could submit the OER to as well, so their OER gains more exposure.

Examples of individual OER sites (Various, 2008):

Repository	Type of Repository	Description	Number of Resources	Licenses
Light and Matter physics and astronomy resources (http://www.lightandmatter.com/index.html)	Textbooks/OpenCourseWare	Created by Benjamin Crowell, physics and astronomy professor at Fullerton College in southern California, the site offers a series of introductory physics textbooks,free to download, some astronomy learning objects, and some course materials for Dr Crowell's astronomy and physics own courses. Some resources have partial French translations.	8 physics textbooks, 3 astronomy learning objects and materials from 5 physics and astronomy courses	CC-BY-SA
Managing the Digital Enterprise (http://digitalenterprise.org/)	Library of links/OpenCourseWare	An educational site created by Michael Rappa, Professor of Technology Management and Director of the Open Courseware Laboratory in the College of Management at North Carolina State University. The site surveys the many opportunities and challenges managers face in an increasingly digital world, and is open to students and instructors alike. The site is divided into fifteen discussion topics, or “modules”. Each module has the same basic structure: a description of the topic that highlights the issues at hand, plus several sub-sections with links to a variety of educational resources. The modules are updated continuously throughout the year, with new resources added.	Over 120 web pages and over 1,200 external links to openly available resources on the Internet. One course on technology management.	Full copyright; permission to use.
The OpenFiction Project (http://www.tofp.org/index.htm)	OpenCourseWare	An OpenCourseWare resource for teaching and learning the art of fiction writing. The OpenFiction Project was created by Stephen Carson and contains the materials that he developed for a distance learning introductory fiction class, originally offered through Emerson College's continuing education programme. (Stephen Carson works for the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative.) Course materials are available on the site or for download (as a zip file of the live contents or as a PDF). There is also an online forum to support users.	One course	CC-BY-NC-ND
PEOI (Professional Education Organization International) (http://www.peoi.org/)	OpenCourseWare	Created by John Petroff, a retired economics professor, PEOI is a volunteer-based project that aims to provide online course content for professional university-level education to improve the skills of aspiring professionals. Anyone can use PEOI course content free of charge. PEOI also offers a range of services such as testing, grading, grade maintenance and attestation of course completion, for a fee to cover costs. Content is available in a range of languages, including English, French, Spanish, Russian, German and Arabic.	Seven completed courses (not all available in all languages)	CC-BY-NC-SA

Sources

Schmidt, P. (2007, November). "7.1.3 Individual Project Sites." UNESCO OER Toolkit draft. WikiEducator. http://www.wikieducator.org/UNESCO_OER_Toolkit_Draft#Individual_project_sites
OER Development and Publishing Initiatives. (2008, February 28). OER Wiki. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=OER_development_and_publishing_initiatives.