Open Educational Resources

As SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) defines it, open educational resources are teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be full courses, course materials, lesson plans, open textbooks, learning objects, videos, games, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge.

OERS in Smith ScholarWorks collections currently include open textbooks, video courses, open labs, and tutorials allowing faculty the opportunity to produce, teach, and engage with free, customizable, and openly-licensed materials. We are working with faculty to expand and build upon our open resource collections.

To find out more about OERS, check out this link to Smith Libraries’ Open Educational Resources guide.

For faculty members interested in exploring how to create OERS or add their existing open educational resources to ScholarWorks, contact ScholarWorks staff.