The cost of textbooks has become a genuine barrier to learning. In the US students routinely skip required texts they cannot afford; across much of Africa and South Asia, a single imported textbook can cost more than a month's living expenses. Meanwhile academics spend nights rebuilding materials that a colleague three time zones away has already created and would happily share. Open educational resources exist to end both problems at once.
OER are teaching materials — textbooks, slides, videos, assessments, whole courses — released under licences that permit free use, adaptation and redistribution. Used well, they cut costs to zero for students and save enormous preparation time for staff. This guide shows how to find, evaluate, adapt and create OER as a working academic anywhere in the world. See the full Teaching & Assessment collection, and pair this with our CPD planning guide to build the skills OER adoption requires.
What OER are and why they matter globally
The defining feature of an OER is not that it is free to view — plenty of copyrighted material is viewable online — but that its licence grants what practitioners call the 5Rs: the right to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. That legal permission is what separates a true open resource from a PDF you happened to find. It means you can legally edit a chapter to suit your syllabus, translate it, and hand the result to your students without asking anyone.
For academics in well-resourced systems, OER mainly save time and student money. For those in emerging-market institutions, they can be transformational: access to current, high-quality materials that would otherwise be locked behind prices or subscriptions their libraries cannot afford. UNESCO's Recommendation on Open Educational Resources, adopted by member states worldwide, frames OER explicitly as a tool for equitable access to knowledge — which is why the movement matters far beyond any single country.
Where to find high-quality open resources
The biggest barrier for newcomers is not scarcity but discovery — there is so much OER that finding the good material feels like searching a warehouse with no map. Start with curated repositories rather than general web search. Well-established sources include OpenStax for peer-reviewed textbooks, MERLOT and OER Commons for cross-disciplinary collections, and MIT OpenCourseWare for full course materials. Many national and regional consortia also host libraries tuned to local curricula.
When you search, filter by licence type from the outset — knowing whether a resource permits commercial use or modification before you invest time in it saves painful surprises later. It also pays to search within your discipline's own communities: subject associations and open-textbook networks often maintain lists of vetted resources that a generic search will never surface. Bookmark two or three repositories you trust rather than starting from scratch each term.
Evaluating an open resource before you adopt it
Free does not mean good, and adopting a weak resource wastes more time than it saves. Evaluate any OER against four criteria before committing a course to it: accuracy (is the content correct and current in your field?), fit (does it match your learning outcomes, not just your topic?), accessibility (does it work for students with disabilities and on the devices and connections your students actually have?), and production quality (is it clear and usable, or does it need heavy editing?).
Pay special attention to the accessibility and technology dimensions if you teach where bandwidth is limited or students learn primarily on phones — a beautiful interactive resource that assumes a fast laptop connection may be useless in practice. A short pilot with a subset of students before full adoption will surface problems that no checklist can predict.
Adapting and remixing without breaking the licence
The real power of OER is the licence to change them, but that freedom comes with rules you must respect. Most OER carry Creative Commons licences, and the specific licence determines what you may do. A CC BY licence lets you adapt and redistribute freely as long as you attribute the original; an SA (ShareAlike) licence additionally requires you to release your adaptation under the same terms; an NC (NonCommercial) licence bars commercial use; and an ND (NoDerivatives) licence forbids adaptation altogether.
Before you remix, check licence compatibility — you cannot legally combine an ND resource into a modified work, and mixing incompatible ShareAlike licences can create a resource you are not permitted to share. Keep a simple attribution record as you build so that crediting sources at the end is a five-minute task rather than a forensic reconstruction. Creative Commons publishes clear licence guidance that is worth reading once properly.
Creating and sharing your own OER
Every academic already produces teaching materials; releasing them as OER turns private effort into public good and, increasingly, into recognised professional contribution. You do not need to write a textbook — a well-made set of lab protocols, a problem bank, or a lecture series shared openly can be enormously valuable to colleagues who lack your resources. Releasing your work also builds your teaching reputation beyond your own institution.
When you publish, choose the most open licence you are comfortable with, deposit the material in a repository where others will actually find it, and document it clearly enough that a stranger could adopt it. The AcademicStaff course-materials organiser helps you keep versions, licences and attributions straight as your open materials grow, so sharing stays simple rather than becoming an administrative burden. For how to log this work for career purposes, see our guide to promotion criteria and evidence.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
The most common mistake is treating "free online" as equivalent to "open" — copying a copyrighted image or article into your course materials because it was easy to find is a legal risk, not an OER practice. Always confirm the licence, and when in doubt, assume material is fully copyrighted. A second frequent error is adopting a resource wholesale without checking that it maps to your learning outcomes, leaving students with content that never quite connects to what you assess.
Finally, beware the sustainability trap: an OER maintained by a single volunteer can vanish or go stale overnight. Favour resources hosted by institutions or active communities, keep a local copy of anything central to your course, and record where you found it. A little defensive practice ensures that the resource your students depend on is still there — and still current — next year.
The OER Adoption Checklist & Licence Cheat-Sheet
A free two-page toolkit: an evaluation checklist for judging any open resource on accuracy, fit, accessibility and quality, plus a plain-English guide to Creative Commons licences and what each one lets you do.
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Frequently asked questions
Are open educational resources the same as free online materials?
No. Free-to-view content may still be fully copyrighted, meaning you cannot legally adapt or redistribute it. True OER carry an open licence — usually Creative Commons — that grants the right to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. Always check the licence before treating something as an OER.
Can I use OER for a course I charge students to take?
It depends on the licence. Resources under a NonCommercial (NC) licence cannot be used in commercial contexts, which may include some paid courses. Resources under CC BY or CC BY-SA generally can, subject to attribution and, for ShareAlike, releasing your adaptation under the same terms. Read the specific licence carefully.
Will using OER be recognised in my promotion case?
Increasingly, yes. Creating, adapting and openly sharing high-quality teaching materials is recognised in many promotion and professional-recognition frameworks as evidence of teaching excellence and scholarly contribution. Keep a record of what you produced, who adopted it, and its impact on student cost and outcomes.
The AcademicStaff editorial team writes practical, evidence-based guidance for university staff — drawing on sector reporting, funder guidelines and the lived administrative reality of academic work. Every guide is reviewed for accuracy against current Australian higher-education practice.