Open Educational Resources
Open Educational Resources (OER), together with Open Educational Practices (OEP), enable innovative and participatory teaching approaches.
Find and publish OER
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials for which the authors grant specific usage rights through open licences, such as Creative Commons licences. This allows for easy reuse, further editing and republishing by third parties. OER can include all types of course materials, such as text, images, audio and video files, educational software, and complete course units.
Search for open teaching materials on Switch OER, the swiss OER repository. As a member of a participating Swiss university, you can also publish on Switch OER.
- Log in to Switch OER with your Switch edu-ID.
- Upload your own OER.
- The ZHAW University Library OER team will assign a DOI to the material and make it publicly available.
The platform went live in July 2024, the pool of available materials is still expanding. You can also use OERSI to search for OER.
ZHAW OER Policy
The ZHAW Executive Board approved an OER Policy on 1 March 2020. This demonstrates the ZHAW’s commitment to the sharing culture that is embedded in the strategy on education and digital transformation for the years 2018 to 2029 (in German) since 2019.
Advantages and potential for teaching
- Showcase your expertise and that of ZHAW in the field,
- The substitution and reuse of OER teaching and learning materials saves time.
- Starting point for new didactic formats that support co-creation, student self-learning scenarios and lifelong learning.
Courses and individual coaching
The OER team at the University Library supports you with your Open Education projects through courses or individual coaching sessions and is available for any questions regarding OER.
- Courses on Open Educational Resources, Creative Commons, as well as copyright, citation, and image rights are available in the University Library’s course offerings.
- For individual coaching or questions, please contact the OER team.
OER courses on offer (ZHAW login required)
OER resources to help you get started
The following resources can help when using, creating or licensing open educational materials.
OER Community
Are you interested in using, creating and distributing OER materials and would you like to exchange ideas with others?
In the OER community on TEAMS you can find out about OER projects and developments at the ZHAW and beyond. Share your own OER in the community and get feedback, exchange information on platforms, licenses or funding opportunities related to OER. If you have any questions about the OER community, email the OER team. We will be happy to help.
ZHAWx on edX global
Since the beginning of 2020, the ZHAW has been a partner organisation of edX, a platform with over 2,500 online courses, so-called MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses, mainly in English. The courses are offered free of charge, but certificates of course completion are subject to a fee. ZHAW students and ZHAW employees have the opportunity to receive certificates for successfully completed ZHAW courses on edX free of charge (contact: minna.koponen@zhaw.ch).
Past projects (Archive)
Students4OER competition 2022
The Students4OER competition took place in Spring 2022. ZHAW students examined the 17 sustainability goals of the UN, resulting in different videos, images, podcasts or other materials published as Open Educational Resources (OER).
Please find the winners and impressions of the final event on the Students4OER website (in German).