Maximising Value with Open Learning Content

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials - from single pieces of content to entire courses and programs - that are publicly available for all to use, and principally through Creative Commons licensing, are legally available for repurposing, modifying, and improving.

Well-known examples of OER repositories or programs include:

• Connexions
• MERLOT
• MIT Open Courseware Initiative
• National Science Digital Library
• OER Commons

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EQUELLA provides a single digital repository where faculty and instructional designers can search and find the best learning content for the desired outcome or activity at hand, whether that content is OER, licensed (paid-for) content, or user-generated content.

With EQUELLA, you can:

• Schedule systematic imports, or harvests, of open content from a variety of sources
• Apply your own tagging preferences or metadata schema to the harvested open content
• Increase the discovery and usage of open content among your educational community
• Save students money on course materials by judiciously mixing OER into the content mix
• Better determine the quality of Open Educational Resources by enabling your users to add comments and ratings to the content
• Track the usage of open content alongside licensed and user-generated content, to help determine the best learning materials across your entire academic program

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Florida Students Save $456,000 in one semester

"We leveraged our Orange Grove repository to distribute an open access Calculus I textbook created by the University of Florida Math Department. By providing access to just this one text, we helped 2,400 students over two semesters save up to $456,000. For students who wish to purchase a commercially printed edition, the cost is $25 for fall, 2011. Our ability to offer these substantial savings is greatly enhanced with EQUELLA."

- Associate Executive Director,
Florida Distance Learning Consortium Director
The Orange Grove Digital Repository