LibGuides: Mathematical Biology: Open Educational Resources (OERs)

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation (UNESCO, 2017).

Benefits of OERs

Saves costs for students
Increases availability of educational materials and maximizes their use
Raises the quality of educational resources by allowing more contributors and reviewers

A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER)
An open access ebook (also available in Spanish) which gives a solid introduction to OERs

Mathematical Biology OERs

These links will take you directly to the portions of databases that contain materials relevant to Mathematical Biology.

Please note this is not an exhaustive list.

AIM Open Textbook Initiative
The American Institute of Mathematics is seeking to encourage the adoption of OERs through a curated list of mathematics textbooks. Consult their website to find the list of approved textbooks, evaluation criteria used in curating the list, and a guide for authors developing OERs.
Applied Math & Science Education Repository - Mathematics
AMSER (the Applied Math and Science Education Repository) is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library, and is being created by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout.
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Licenses vary. Verify individual items.
Bookboon.com - Statistics & Mathematics
Bookboon.com contains free eBooks and textbooks that can be downloaded as a pdf, no registration needed. These books cannot be altered, but can be freely printed, shared, or embedded in non-commercial ways. They are intended only for individuals, colleges, and schools.
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Site-Specific Licensing
MIT Open Courseware - Mathematics
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
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CC BY-NC-SA 3.0; Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US)
myOpenMath
Provides pre-built online homework courses based on popular open textbooks. The open textbook list is available to review at http://www.opentextbookstore.com/catalog.php
OpenStax - Math
Open source textbooks that are written by professional content developers who are experts in their fields and undergo a rigorous peer review process. All textbooks meet standard scope and sequence requirements.
Open Textbook Library - Mathematics & Statistics
The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks. The Open Textbook Library is supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Textbook Network.
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Licenses vary. Verify individual items.
Orange Grove - Mathematics
Florida’s digital repository for instructional resources, which includes a collection of open textbooks on a variety of subjects.
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Licenses vary. Verify individual items.
PhET Interactive Simulations
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.
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These simulations are free for instructors to use, distribute, and modify - even in commercial ways. Attribution must be given to the original source, however.

Works Cited

UNESCO. (2017). Open educational resources (OER). Retrieved https://en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer