Open resources are resources that can be freely accessed online.

Although the and the have an abundant number of resources for their online educators, there are still resources outside of that we would like to direct you to for your professional development needs. Below are three main areas to review.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

"According to the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), UDL is "a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn" (http://www.cast.org/our-work/about-udl.html#.Vfgp8ZdWIZw (Links to an external site.) ). Until recently, the main concentration by CAST has been in the k-12 environment. Recently, CAST created a website specifically with higher education in mind called, UDL on Campus: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education (Links to an external site.). Visit their website to learn more about what they offer faculty and institutions at the higher educational level.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge." [1]

The 's Diigo social bookmarking pages links to several open educational resources for you to explore. These materials are either in the public domain or have Creative Commons licensing (Links to an external site.) that informs you how you can use or modify the work for your instructional needs.

The 2014 UCF Mobile and eTextbook survey found 24% of students who had used an eTextbook accessed an open textbook.

Nationally, The U.S. PIRG Education Fund surveyed 2,000 students across 163 college campuses in the United States. Two important results emerged from the survey.

65% of students choose not to buy a college textbook because it’s too expensive
82% of students say they would do significantly better in a course if the textbook were free online and a hard copy was optional.

U.S. PIRG Education Fund full report (Links to an external site.)

Open eTextbook Repositories

MERLOT (Links to an external site.) offers 3,300 open eTextbooks in areas such as arts, business, education, humanities, math, science, and social sciences.
Flat World Knowledge (Links to an external site.) offers over 100 open textbooks in business, social sciences, humanities, sciences, and mathematics, and can be customized.
MIT Open Courseware (Links to an external site.) offers free engineering, science, and mathematics eTextbooks.
Noba (Links to an external site.) offers open psychology materials, organized by topics and chapters, which can be organized into an eTextbook.
OER Commons (Links to an external site.) is a host of open educational resources, including a search for over 750 open textbooks in areas such as education, arts, humanities, social sciences, science, and mathematics.
Open Stax (Links to an external site.) provides no cost eTextbooks for higher education and K-12. This is a partnership between non-profit organizations and Rice University.

Emerging Technologies (ET)

Strategies and best practices for using technology in online teaching and learning emerge constantly. Some technologies will survive and prevail while others will be tested and disappoint. Keeping up-to-date and implementing technologies can be overwhelming.’s “go to” source for these emerging technologies is the annual Horizon Report (Links to an external site.).

Produced by ELI and NMC each year, the Horizon Report (Links to an external site.) describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years.[2] (Links to an external site.)

Sources:

Open Educational Resources: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Links to an external site.)
Emerging technologies Horizon Report: http://www.educause.edu/library/term/33560 (Links to an external site.)

Creative Commons License

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.