Information for Students
Making the most of online information with Open Educational Resources.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available on the internet and licenced in a way that allows you to use them, and in some cases, modify them. The types of resources available can be anything that supports learning, for example: lecture notes, presentation slides, videos, hand-outs, interactive learning objects, reading lists and assessment questions.
Many global universities provide access to their education materials in this way. Open Resources can be useful to your studies as they provide you with an additional source of information on diverse perspectives of your chosen subject.
For more information about Open Educational Resources, visit www.openeducationalresources.pbworks.com
How do I access resources that have been made freely available by other universities?
The Xpert search engine provides access to more than 250,000 educational resources at www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert.
The Xpert image search: www.nottingham.ac.uk/xpert/attribution lets you search and use licensed images from Flickr and automatically adds attribution statements. This helps you cite where you found the image and makes it clear to anyone that might be looking at your work that you haven’t taken the image from an inappropriate source.
YouTube EDU showcases academic videos. The University has its own dedicated channel: www.youtube.com/nottmuniversity
iTunes U is the educational collection of information within iTunes. The University has its own iTunes U page with access to hundreds of free educational video and audio podcasts: www.nottingham.ac.uk/itunesu
How do I view education materials that The University makes freely available to the world?
U-Now is the University’s collection of OER which have been uploaded to the web for anyone to use. The materials range from complete modules to smaller scale learning objects and highlight a range of teaching and learning activities from across the University. There are no assessments or credits awarded. U-Now provides an opportunity to browse or download material and learn about a familiar subject or new topic. Visit U-Now at: unow.nottingham.ac.uk
Images and multi-media material copyright
You might want to use images, figures, graphs, videos and other multi-media material in your work so be aware of the copyright protection. To be on the safe side, you can use material that has been created under a creative commons licence. This allows the re-use of material according to the conditions of the creator. For more information about the licence that are used with these resources visit www.creativecommons.org.uk