About Us

Welcome to OPEN Washington, an Open Educational Resources (OER) network.

Why this site?

During the qualitative research SBCTC conducted in 2014, faculty stressed the need for web resources that provide easy and organized access to OER. They experienced significant difficulty in using currently available OER due to a lack of guidance and organization of the materials. In response to this need, SBCTC launched this site in 2014; it is an open educational resources network for Washington State Community and Technical College (WA CTC) faculty.

This website has one goal in mind–

Making OER work for faculty

This website is dedicated to providing easy pathways for faculty to learn, find, use and apply OER. The major features include:

Learn OER: In addition to how to use open licenses and locate existing OER, the self-paced modules walk you through how to incorporate open educational resources into your teaching practice.
Find OER: A categorized search guide for all types of OER. We’ve broken down these resources to help you choose those that best fit your needs. For each you’ll find a list of unique traits, licensing information, and an example of how to attribute the source.
Q&A: A community help center where users can freely post questions and answers on OER topics. This knowledge base is also searchable.
OER Stories: Our WA CTC faculty share their personal journeys in using OER. If you are interested in telling your story, please contact us.
OER News: The OER news distribution center for WA CTC system. If you have any OER information to share or promote (or show off), such as an OER professional development event at your campus, new study results, or local OER training opportunities, please contact us.

Usage information

This website is developed, managed, and supported by SBCTC’s OER team.
Unless otherwise noted, all works on this website are licensed under CC BY 4.0. See Terms of Use to learn more about our license settings and the recommended citation.
Photo credit on the home page: Public Domain image by Geran de Klerk

Thanks to:

Creative Commons—for reviewing all training materials in “Learn OER”.
Kelley Meeusen—for naming this website.
Everett Community College—for OER interviews.
Tacoma Community College—for OER interviews.
The AccessComputing project at the University of Washington for help with accessibility.