Textbook Alternatives

Gateway to the Library of Congress’s vast resources of digitized American historical materials; documents U.S. history and culture.

A "resource for students and instructors to encounter, consider, practice, and play with language choice" through "examples of various stylistic techniques at work."

A collection of videos and essays to support the study of art and cultural heritage.

Over 50 million "artworks, artifacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe."

Large collection of Asian artworks, lessons, videos , and background information.

A repository where humanities scholars can upload course materials, white papers, conference papers, code, and digital projects.

This site showcases content from cultural associations. You can explore the site by artists, mediums, art movements, historical events, historical figures, or places. Most of these resources aren't technically OER, but most are free on the web.

Directory of open resources, includes anatomy, audiology, drugs, evidence & guidelines, first aid, health education, mental health, nursing, nutrition, pediatric health, specialty areas, and more. Uses an advisory board of doctors, scientists, and pharmacists to ensure quality of resources.

an educational simulation of an electronic health records system

Photographs, illustrations, and microscopic images in the public domain can be searched by keyword or browsed by category.

A list of librarian recommended OER for Teacher Education classes.

AERO maintains a large library of open resources on evidence-based teaching practices. This includes practice guides, templates, checklists and rubrics. Unfortunately, the online videos can't be played in the U.S. You can search the collection by keyword, browse by topic, or browse by grade level (under Education Settings).

This open access journal publishes "double-blind peer-reviewed cases for use by educational leadership preparation programs and leaders".

Study guides for selected Hidden Brain podcasts. "Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships."

Resources about evidence-based instructional and intervention practices developed in collaboration with nationally recognized researchers and education experts. Includes modules, case study units, activities, & Web-based tools.

Photographs, illustrations, and microscopic images in the public domain can be searched by keyword or browsed by category. Includes many photos of children in educational settings.

Simulations useful for teaching Law of Large Numbers, Central Limit Theorem, Joint Distributions, Least Squares Regression, Omitted Variable Bias

Find OER for teaching many world languages.

A repository of free online resources for Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian studies.

A large collection of World Languages open educational resources contributed and sometime peer reviewed by educators.

Interpersonal speaking activities for K-16 language instructors, includes resources for Arabic, Basque, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, & Spanish, as well as activities that can be adapted for any language.

"The purpose of these PBL units is to provide advanced students of Spanish (generally 3rd and 4th year college students) a series of compelling problems from Spanish culture and society."

Online exercises for first year Spanish.

Detailed grammar explanations with authentic video examples

Provides links by different varieties of English to free resources provided by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Open access books in Spanish.

Open access books from university presses in Latin America and the Caribbean.

An online library for political science teaching and learning materials from the American Political Science Association.

Large collection of free readings, simulations, videos, and more. Covers foreigh policy, climate topics, history, economics, democracy, technology, and other global topics.

Lists free science resources designed to support remote science education.

An online database of animal natural history, distribution, classification, and conservation biology at the University of Michigan.

Offers "multimedia resources, including apps, animations, videos, interactives, and virtual labs" on biology, chemistry of life, ecology, environment, evolution, genetics, and scientific process.

"The ChemCollective is a collection of virtual labs, scenario-based learning activities, tutorials, and concept tests."

A coloring book exploring cellular biology from the journal Cell. Free.

Many interactive resources for Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Space Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics.

Offers assignments related to digital storytelling, in categories such as video, audio, web, visual, mashup, design, coding, animated GIFS, and more. Each assignment links to examples of the work that people have done in response to it.

"The Encyclopedia of Life brings together information about all life on Earth—one web page for each species. But EOL is much more than 1.9 million species pages. It's an incredible resource for text, images, video, sounds, maps, classifications and more, all freely available online."

Free manuals and educational materials about free software.

A large very well organized directory of computing related materials, which also includes mathematics, other STEM areas, and business. Many items are are not actually books--but could be lecture notes, syllabi, etc. No evidence that content is vetted, but authors are often affiliated with universities.

Online courses on engineering related topics, Many of these are only temporarily available and have end dates.

iLumina is a digital library of sharable undergraduate teaching materials for chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science

Although designed for grades 1 thru 13, many of the OER on this site could work for undergraduate classes. Especially useful for finding interactive OER and short videos.

"MyOpenMath is designed for mathematics, providing delivery of homework, quizzes, and tests with rich mathematical content. Students can receive immediate feedback on algorithmically generated questions with numerical or algebraic expression answers. And it can do so much more, providing a full course management system, including file posting, discussion forums, and a full gradebook, all designed with mathematics in mind."

Search for STEM related OER.
Tip: The Advanced Search allows you narrow by subject area, material type, and educational use (assessment, instructional, etc.)

A collection of micro and macro imagery describing forms in nature including landforms, minerals, aquatic and terrestrial animal and plant life, insects, cellular structures and skeletal segments.

Open Access Biomedical Image Search Engine

Links to OER from a prof at St Olaf College.

"Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery."

A free collection of physics simulations with changeable parameters and real-time animation.

Focusing on the life sciences, The QUBES platform hosts hundreds of teaching materials, reference materials, and cloud-based software free to use and adapts using open Creative Commons licenses.

A public-domain library of cross-sectional cryosection, CT, and MRI images obtained from one male cadaver and one female cadaver.

"high-quality, accessible, educational content in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the introductory undergraduate level."

An open-source online homework system for STEM courses.

Simulations useful for teaching Law of Large Numbers, Central Limit Theorem, Joint Distributions, Least Squares Regression, Omitted Variable Bias

This guide provides detailed info on open educational resources, including info on creating OERs.

"Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools," including Creative Commons copyright licenses.

This guide provides detailed info on Creative Commons copyright.