Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching and learning materials that are available in the public domain, freely accessible, and free to reuse.
OERs include any medium and any format from full courses, specific course material, textbooks, videos, or any other format to support learning. Because there is no cost associated with using an OER, they are a great way to save your students from having to purchase an expensive textbook.
There are a number of OER platforms that include textbooks for the health sciences:
This Living Library is a principal hub of the LibreTexts project, which is a multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop the next generation of open-access texts to improve postsecondary education at all levels of higher learning. The LibreTexts approach is highly collaborative, where an Open Access textbook environment is under constant revision by students, faculty, and outside experts to supplant conventional paper-based books.
MedEdPORTAL Publications is a free publication service provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges in partnership with the American Dental Education Association. MedEdPORTAL Publications promotes educational scholarship and collaboration by facilitating the open exchange of peer-reviewed health education teaching and assessment resources.
MERLOT Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff, and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy.
OpenStax publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low-cost in print.
For more information about OERs and how to adopt them for your courses, please see HSLIC’s Open Educational Resources Guide.