Open Educational Resources (OER) for English Language Instruction

banner: Open Educational Resources (OER) for English Language Instruction

What Educators Say

"Due to the OER I found, I introduced new activities into my classes. I was also able to offer lots of resources to my learners that they can use independently."

"I share resources with my students and my coworkers. I plan on continuing to evaluate and author resources, because I believe we all benefit from sharing."

"OER opens the world and broadens our horizons."

Open educational resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits sharing, accessing, repurposing—including for commercial purposes—and collaborating with others.” (See OER Fact Sheet for more information.) Many OER are accessible through the OER Commons website, where you can find lesson plans, interactive games, videos, and many other resources that are free and available for all educators, including those who work with ELLs.

Why Use OER?

  • High-quality resources allow educators to use OER to improve their teaching and their students' learning.
  • OER are evaluated by educators, so we know they work.
  • They are flexible and easy to access.
  • They are rich sources of content.
  • Educators can customize resources for their specific needs.
  • OER content is entirely free.

Where can you find OER to use in your adult ESL classroom?

As part of the LINCS ESL Pro project, two groups of master adult ESL teachers worked to find, use, and evaluate OER specifically for language learners. Many of these teachers also created and shared their own materials on OER Commons with open licenses using Open Author, a free tool for creating and sharing open materials. The OER that were evaluated vary in terms of instructional level, topic, focus, and type of material.

To access these OER, go to the Adult Education Open Community of Resources on OER Commons; then click on the “Adult ESL” shared folder.

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