New Database Trial: Ebsco’s Faculty Select (Open Educational Resources)

With the quick pivot to fully online instruction, open educational resources (OER) are more important than ever before.

Unlike commercial learning materials, which are protected by traditional copyright, OER are openly licensed. Open licenses allow educators to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute content (popularly referred to as the 5 Rs of Open) without payment or permission from the copyright owner.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a single online repository for OER. For this reason, locating OER to support course content can take some leg work. To ease the process, Ebsco developed Faculty Select, a database that “streamlines access to high-quality [OER] and enable[s] faculty to search and request access to high-quality e-books.”

Faculty Select is a paid-for tool, but Ebsco is providing instructors with free access to a simplified version until June 30, 2020. If you’ve been considering incorporating open textbooks or other OER into your courses, Faculty Select provides a convenient starting point.

For further assistance locating and incorporating OER into your online courses, contact Open Langara at open@langara.ca.

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