Key U.S. Open Education Resources (OER) projects in K-12, Higher Education, and the corporate sector. This is not a comprehensive list of U.S. or global OER projects.

OER Definition: OER are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.

K-12 and Higher Education

PhET Interactive Simulations

• Overview: 113 interactive, research-based and user-tested simulations for teaching science and math. The simulations are openly licensed with Creative Commons Attribution and the Creative Commons GNU General Public License. Over 25 million simulations run per year; 60 million simulations run to date. Ranked top site on search of 'science simulation' on Google out of 161 million sites (1st on Yahoo & Bing). Translated into 66 languages. Peak usage during K-12 school hours. Used in all 50 states, and by hundreds of universities. 30 published articles about use and impact in education. Demonstrated improvement in learning across multiple topics.
• Cost savings for teachers and schools: K-12 and college teachers can use PhET OER simulations instead of purchasing high-cost, lower-quality simulations from commercial company.
• Cost savings for commercial and non-commercial companies: PhET simulations are being used by numerous commercial and non-commercial companies and organizations for free, including Pearson, Plato Learning, Compass Learning, McGraw-Hill, and many more.
• Open niche: High-quality science and math simulations providing flexible use that transforms the way science is taught and learned across K-16 levels.
• CC license used: CC BY; see their licensing policy

Connexions

• Overview: high quality OER repository with ~20,000 openly licensed content modules.
• Cost savings: K-12 teachers can use Connexions OER instead of purchasing supplemental materials; may be able to be used in place of commercial textbooks in some instances.
• Open niche: online platform so teachers can build customized lessons by combining OER modules in unique ways.
• CC license used: CC BY; see their licensing policy

OER Commons

• Overview: high quality OER referatory with 31,000+ openly licensed content modules from more than 530 content providers.
• Cost savings: K-12 teachers and professors can use OER instead of purchasing supplemental materials; may be able to be used in place of commercial textbooks in some instances.
• Open niche: Resources are user-evaluated by Achieve OER Quality rubrics, user aligned to Common Core State Standards, rated and shared. OER workshops and trainings: train over 1,500 teachers per year on: introduction to OER, open licensing, collaborative content creation and remixing OER.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA for OER Commons; see their conditions of use for licenses on resources in OER Commons

Khan Academy

• Overview: A library of over 2,700 videos covering multiple academic topics and 276 practice exercises. All are openly licensed and available for free online.
• Cost savings: Free lessons for many academic topics.
• Open niche: Conversational, short modules that are engaging. Math gaming overlay that awards learners points and badges as learners progress.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA

K-12

Utah Open Textbook project

• Overview: Seven public high school science teachers and 1200 students in Utah used adapted openly licensed CK-12 textbooks in their classrooms last year. Student test scores were compared to the control group (traditional textbooks) and cost savings were measured. Conclusion? Simply substituting open textbooks for proprietary textbooks did not impact learning outcomes. 22 students and 2700 students are participating this year. The Utah State Office of Education recently announced that they are encouraging all 6-12 language arts, math, and science teachers to adopt open textbooks starting fall 2012.
• Cost savings: print on demand for the adapted CK-12 textbooks cost the school district just $4.25 per book (including shipping) compared to typical $80 textbooks.
• Open niche: project has proven, with data, open textbooks can both save significant money and be high quality.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA; license of original CK-12 material

Open High School of Utah

• Overview: Seven public high school science teachers and 1200 students in Utah used adapted openly licensed CK-12 textbooks in their classrooms last year. Student test scores were compared to the control group (traditional textbooks) and cost savings were measured. Conclusion? Simply substituting open textbooks for proprietary textbooks did not impact learning outcomes. 22 students and 2700 students are participating this year. The Utah State Office of Education recently announced that they are encouraging all 6-12 language arts, math, and science teachers to adopt open textbooks starting fall 2012.
• Cost savings: print on demand for the adapted CK-12 textbooks cost the school district just $4.25 per book (including shipping) compared to typical $80 textbooks.
• Open niche: project has proven, with data, open textbooks can both save significant money and be high quality.
• CC license used: CC BY; see their licensing policy

Curriki

• Overview: 40,000 K-12 openly licensed educational resources.
• Cost savings: K-12 teachers can use Curriki OER instead of purchasing supplemental materials; may be able to be used in place of commercial textbooks in some instances.
• Open niche: OER content is aligned with state education standards.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC; see their licensing policy

CK-12

• Overview: 90+ free, high quality OER K-12 textbooks available in various formats like PDF, iPad and Kindle.
• Cost savings: Books are free; print-on-demand copies are approximately $5, in most states K-12 textbooks cost on average $150; because they’re so expensive they’re often 10+ years out of date.
• Open niche: highest quality, openly licensed, multi-format K-12 open textbooks aligned to state as well as common core content.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA; see their licensing policy

Higher Education

MIT Open Courseware

• Overview: MIT OpenCourseWare 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. MIT OCW materials have reached more than 125 million individuals worldwide through our site, translations, ITunes U and YouTube, and faculty reuse; accessed by more than 3,500 .edu and .ac domains worldwide; received 97M visits; 14 M zip file copies of courses have been downloaded.
• Cost savings: Course content is free and open to use.
• Open niche: First large, prestigious University to open its content, under a Creative Commons license, to the world.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA; see their licensing policy

Open Course Library

• Overview: The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of expertly developed OER courses for Washington State Community Colleges’ highest enrolled 81 courses. 42 courses have been completed so far. 39 more courses will be finished by the end of 2013.
• Cost savings: The courses are openly licensed with Creative Commons Attribution and are free to everyone. Because the textbook cost in each course is limited (by design) to $30, there is a 90% textbook savings for students. This translates to $102 in savings per student per course.
• Open niche: Developing OER for highest enrolled community college courses and making affordability a priority.
• CC license used: CC BY; see their licensing policy

Saylor.org

• Overview: Saylor.org is a repository of free, openly licensed, OER based courses on a variety of subjects.
• Cost savings: Saylor provides free access to high quality courses for self learners.
• Open niche: Saylor invests in aggregating the best of OER content from across the web and builds its own online courses. They are also running an open textbook competition which will award $20,000 for the production (or buyout) of openly licensed textbooks.
• CC license used: CC BY; see their licensing policy

Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC) and Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER)

• Overview: These groups contain collectively over 400 member institutions in support of openly licensed courseware community colleges and universities in the U.S. and around the world.
• Cost savings: OER content can help save college students hundreds of dollars per quarter as it begins to be use as a supplement or in replacement of expensive commercial textbooks.
• Open niche: These groups have a powerful collective voice in supporting openness on campus, from faculty, students, and administration.
• CC license used: CC BY for site content; licensing policies vary by member institutions

Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI)

• Overview: OLI uses learning science, online learning and cognitive tutoring to transform instruction, significantly improving learning outcomes and achieve significant increases in productivity in learning outcomes.
• Cost savings: OLI courses are high quality and free to use by community colleges. OLI course redesign is data driven, so colleges don’t waste time and money recreating the wheel.
• Open niche: uses rigorous instructional design methodology and feedback loops to: course redesign (so designers are guided by how students learn), students (the curriculum changes in real time), faculty (data dashboards of how students are doing) and learning science (researchers test new pedagogy in OLI courses to advance best practices).
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA

MERLOT

• Overview: MERLOT is an online repository of 32,000+ online OER materials.
• Cost savings: Free access to high quality OER materials for supplement or replacement of expensive learning resources.
• Open niche: MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA and CC BY-NC-ND; see their licensing policy

Open Study

• Overview: OpenStudy is a free, online tutoring service for college and high schools students. It is a social learning network where students ask questions, provide help, and connect with students studying the same subjects and experts wanting to help. OpenStudy connects both learners accessing OER content, OpenCourseWare courses and those enrolled in traditional colleges.
• Cost savings: The free online tutoring service can save an institution up to $25/hour (typically $5000 a semester for a community college) tutoring fees charged by a provider like Tutor.com.
• Open niche: Building a sustainable service powered by peer interactions, driven by a strong social mission of enabling anyone to teach thousands.
• CC license used: CC BY-NC-SA; see their licensing policy

College Open Textbooks

• Overview: College Open Textbooks (COT) is collection of colleges, governmental agencies, education non-profits, and other education-related organizations that are focused on the mission of driving awareness, adoptions, and affordability of open textbooks.
• Cost savings: Provide information to colleges about the cost benefits of open textbooks and best practices for adoption. Colleges that adopt open textbooks save their students significant money, increasing college access and decreasing student debt.
• Open niche: Listing, peer reviewing, and accessibility reviewing open textbooks that are appropriate to community colleges.
• CC license used: none for the site, but they drive awareness to CC-licensed textbooks

Kaleidoscope

• Overview: Kaleidoscope supports the institutional adoption of OER to improve the success of low-income students. The eight college partners are delivering ten high-enrollment courses that use only OER. Rather than creating new open resources, Kaleidoscope partners adopt and improve the best of existing open resources. In the project's first year it is serving over 8,000 students.
• Cost savings: In Fall 2012 the required textbook cost per student for Kaleidoscope courses was $1.20. Ninety-seven percent of students providing feedback believe the open materials to be of equal or greater quality to those they have used previously.
• Open niche: Driving broad adoption of all open education projects for the benefit of low-income students. Kaleidoscope courses use materials from the Open Course Library, the Open Learning Initiative, Saylor.org., MERLOT, College Open Textbooks, Flat World Knowledge and others.
• CC license used: none for the site, but they drive awareness to various CC-licensed OER