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Open Educational Resources (OER)

a guide for instructors and faculty to learn more about Open Education Resources, where to find them, how to use them, and how to create them

Gavilan College Curated OER Collection

Gavilan College has started to build its own curated collection of OER materials that are specific to our courses and our students on the OER Commons California Community College Hub. If you find additional sources, or would like the library to help you locate sources, please contact Reference Librarians Hannah Clement at hclement@gavilan.edu or Aleah Kropholler at akropholler@gavilan.edu

      Gavilan College Group Hub                                                                    

To find materials already selected for your department, look at the Discipline Folders on the left to select your section. All materials listed may be used in your course by either downloading the material and uploading it into your Canvas shell; or simply providing the URL link to your students.

For more guidance on searching for OER, see the 4 minute video below

Using Google Advanced Search to Find OER

Google has the most powerful search engine in the world. They have extensive metadata tagging and retrieval algorithms, so why not use them to our advantage?

As usual, use the Google search box to search for your topic. Adding "OER" helps limit your results. Once you are prompted with a list of results, click "Settings" on the top right of your page.

                             Google Advanced Search box 1

Settings will give you a drop down menu. Select Advanced Search.

                                               

On the Advanced Search page, scroll down to the very bottom of the page. Look for "Usage Rights". Be sure to select "free to use share or modify". Now click Advanced Search at the bottom of the screen.

                                                          

 

Now your results list is much more focused and significantly more likely to find the OER you are looking for.

                                                        


 

Major OER Sites

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool developed by SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 98 different sources.

Top O​ER Repositories 

There are many excellent OER resources, we have compiled a list of what we believe to be the most versatile and useful. This ranking is based on: ease of use, breadth of content, and how often the repositories are updated.

This text is a derivative of work of College of the Canyons ZTC for Faculty webpage which is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License

Searching for OER by Format

Searching for OER by Subject A-B


"OER by Subject" by Tidewater Community College is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0   / A derivative from the original work

"OER by Subject" by Tidewater Community College is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0   / A derivative from the original work

Searching for OER by Subject C-E

  • MERLOT Criminal Justice - an educational resource for teaching and learning. Use this portal to discover online learning materials, MERLOT members, journals, professional organizations, and news in your discipline. Please be aware that not all resources in MERLOT are open.

  • C-SPAN Video Library  One of the most comprehensive video archives of governmental and political content. Freely available to the public. Search terms: “criminology, “criminal justice”

  • Law and Society An MIT OpenCourseWare class examining "the central features of law as a social institution and as a feature of popular culture. We will explore the nature of law as a set of social systems, central actors in the systems, legal reasoning, and the relationship of the legal form and reasoning to social change."

  • Crime, Heredity and Insanity in American History "This course will give students an opportunity to learn more about the ways in which Americans have thought about crime and insanity and how their ideas have changed over time." From the University of Notre Dame OpenCourseWare.

  • The Open University has several units on crimes and criminal justice in their Society, Politics & Law section.

  • ASC Syllabi Collection A collection of course resources for criminal justice and criminology classes, including syllabi, readings, activities and films. Compiled by The American Society of Criminology.

  • Criminal Justice: An Overview of the System   This text is designed as a first course in criminal justice.  It covers police, courts, and corrections, integrating the juvenile justice system.

  • Fundamental Cases in Criminal Justice This text provides easy to read, abridged landmark cases across a wide variety of criminal justice topics.

  • Legal Research for Criminal Justice This text is designed for a legal research methods course taught within a criminal justice program.

  • 50 Essential Open Courseware about Criminal Justice

  • MIT Courseware – Law and Society - 50 essential open courseware classes to learn about criminal justice.

  • OER Commons

  • Data and Statistical Resources

    •  FBI - Crime Statistics Publish or contribute to a series of statistical crime reports and publications, detailing specific offenses and outlining trends that can help you better understand crime threats both nationally and locally

    • Data.gov Whether you are interested in crime, roadway safety, or safety in the workplace, we have something for you.

    •  Bureau of Justice Statistics To collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels government. These data are critical to federal, state, and local policymakers in combating crime and ensuring that justice is both efficient and evenhanded.

  • Criminal Law - textbook from Open Textbook Library

  • Criminal Justice -learning objects from Wisc-Online 


"OER by Subject" by Tidewater Community College is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0   / A derivative from the original work

Searching for OER by Subject F-L

Searching for OER by Subject M-P

Searching for OER by Subject S-W

Search by ISBN or Course Number

Search by Course       OpenOregon has compiled a list of the OER textbooks used in Oregon Community College system that can be searched by discipline and by specific course.

Search by ISBN          Cool4Ed has created a search engine that allows you to enter the ISBN of a textbook to find related free e-textbooks.