URI Guide to Free OER Platforms
A faculty-focused guide to free textbook and courseware alternatives.
This University of Rhode Island ITS article introduces open educational resources and summarizes five free platforms instructors can use to replace or supplement commercial course materials. It covers LibreTexts, OpenStax, OER Commons, MIT OpenCourseWare, and the Open Textbook Library, with notes on content types, disciplines, licensing, customization, and LMS-related support.
Why it stands out
- Narrows a broad OER landscape to five well-known sources suited to higher education course redesign.
- Compares different OER formats in one place, from full textbooks to MIT course packets and multimedia resources.
- Frames the platforms around instructor adoption decisions, not just student self-study.
- Highlights customization and remix possibilities, which are central to OER use but easy to overlook.
- Includes both large repositories and curated textbook libraries, giving faculty multiple entry points.
Good to know
- This is a static informational article, not a searchable OER catalog or comparison database.
- Coverage is limited to five platforms, so it omits many discipline-specific OER collections.
- Licensing terms, review status, and file formats still need to be checked on each linked platform before adoption.
- The guidance is written for URI faculty, though most of the resources are broadly usable.
Under the radar: Use the list as a workflow: start with OpenStax or the Open Textbook Library for ready-made textbook replacements, then check OER Commons or LibreTexts if you need to assemble or remix a more customized set of materials.
Photos
College instructors replacing commercial textbooks can compare five no-cost OER sources before redesigning a course. Find peer-reviewed open textbooks for introductory or high-enrollment classes. Locate adaptable course modules, lecture notes, assignments, videos, and assessments. Identify platforms that support remixing or authoring custom open course materials. Share a concise OER starting point with faculty committees or teaching support teams.
Overview of five major OER sources; direct platform URLs; discipline and content-type summaries; notes on textbook downloads, course materials, authoring/remix options, reviews, LMS integration, assessments, and accessibility-oriented benefits.
Alternative listings
A university-curated launch point for open textbook and OER searches.
Open educational resources & free learning platformsUIC Library’s guide gathers major open textbook libraries, OER repositories, and cross-repository search tools in one place. It is designed to help instructors and students locate freely usable course materials, with links to related guidance on evaluating, adopting, or creating open textbooks.
0 votesVisit siteA curated gateway to free courses, books, films, and lectures.
Open educational resources & free learning platformsOpen Culture collects and organizes free educational and cultural material from around the web, including online courses, audiobooks, ebooks, films, language lessons, podcasts, and textbooks. The site combines large resource lists with regularly updated articles that highlight notable videos, archival finds, lectures, music, and humanities-related media.
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Similar sites elsewhere
- OER Commons — oercommons.org
- Open Textbook Library — open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
- OpenStax — openstax.org
- LibreTexts — libretexts.org