Increasingly, more and more institutions are making online educational resources and course materials available free of charge for educational or non-profit purposes. I list here just some of the more important web sites that provide access to free material.
If you, either as an instructor or as a student, are intending to make use of any of this material, be sure you pay attention to the copyright conditions. They may be free, but only under certain conditions.
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder webpages, together with associated comments, and bookmark collections, all intended to enhance the teaching experience of using a learning material. It is important to note that most MERLOT materials have been peer reviewed before published.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
MIT was the first institution to offer its courseware online for free, without having to register as a student. In 1999, the Faculty considered how to use the Internet in pursuit of this goal, and in 2000 proposed OpenCourseware (OCW). MIT published the first proof-of-concept site in 2002, containing 50 courses. By November 2007, MIT completed the initial publication of virtually the entire curriculum, over 1,800 courses in 33 academic disciplines. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
Founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012, edX is an online learning destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from 130 of the world’s leading universities and institutions to learners everywhere.
Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. All lectures were recorded in the Yale College classroom and are available in video, audio, and text transcript format. Registration is not required and no course credit is available.
The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is a joint effort by the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, the League for Innovation in the Community College and many other community colleges and university partners to develop and use open educational resources (OER) in community college courses.
Through BCcampus, British Columbia was the first province in Canada to implement an open education initiative. By February 2017, more than 170 university and college texts were accessible online for students, saving BC’s post-secondary students nearly $4-million since the project was implemented in 2012. All its open textbooks have been peer reviewed and approved by BC faculty. These texts are available free of charge for use in any province or state from here.
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, whose mission is to improve student access to education. Their first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and their library now has 29 books for college that are used by hundreds of thousands of students. Since 2012, OpenStax has saved students $155 million (as of August, 2018).
The Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that offers over 1,500 YouTube videos on mathematics, finance, biology, physics and history, mainly aimed at the k-12 sector, but some of the material is certainly useful at a post-secondary level as well.
Coordinated by the OER Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, the OERu network of institutions offers free online courses for students worldwide. The OERu partners also provide affordable ways for learners to gain academic credit towards qualifications from recognised institutions.
The Open University (United Kingdom)
The OpenLearn site was launched in October 2006, with an aim to regularly add new content and features. There are nearly 1000 courses on OpenLearn, all of which are currently free to study. OpenLearn courses cover a wide range of subjects taught across the OU curriculum. Many are based on Open University course materials while others are written specifically for OpenLearn.
The OU’s FutureLearn also provides free online courses or MOOCs, but note that they are not openly licensed in the sense that instructors cannot incorporate FutureLearn materials into their own courses without permission (see their terms and conditions).
The Open University of Hong Kong
The OUHK offers free courseware from its programs in both English and Cantonese/Mandarin.
OER Africa showcases resources and information to help with understanding OER; information on what is happening in OER in higher education in Africa; and OER courseware that has been developed in Africa and research, and policies around OER in Africa.
The African Health OER Network seeks to enable participants to develop, adapt, and share health education resources to augment limited human and other resources in the health sector and impact positively on overall health provision in Africa and beyond.
The African Virtual University
The AVU OER repository has 3 communities (English, French and Portuguese) and 4 collections (Teacher Education, Applied Computer Science, Policy Briefs, and articles of AVU’s peer-reviewed open-access journal). Since its launch in 2011 the AVU OERs portal has been accessed at least 2.8 million times from 225 countries and territories (date: 7 August, 2018)
The Open University of Catalonia
UOC OpenCourseWare is the website used by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain) to offer its teaching materials to the Internet community: teachers, students and self-learners. The courses available to date in English are primarily in the computer sciences.
FHSST (Free High School Science Texts) is a project that aims to provide free science and mathematics textbooks for Grades 10 to 12 science learners in South Africa. The project was initiated by young South African scientists, and now brings together scientists from around the world who are willing to contribute to the writing of the books.
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.