Teaching and learning is the heart of our work on the OER Team at the City Tech Library. While we assist with technical work, copyright, and the ins and outs of finding and licensing open educational resources, our goal is to provide faculty with opportunities to generate pedagogical materials and foster a classroom environment that is aligned with best practices in teaching and learning and with their own values as educators.

We have gathered some open resources below that deal explicitly with the subject of teaching and learning and its application of techniques and tools in the classroom, as well as in online instruction. Enjoy! 

  • 100 Ideas for Active Learning, by Active Learning Network (2022). License: CC BY
    “100 Ideas for Active Learning is a practical handbook to inspire innovative educational experiences. It is for educators and curriculum designers who wish to apply active learning tools and strategies in their own teaching and learning contexts. Effective learning happens through embodied experiences, when students are utilizing all their senses – physical, mental, emotional, and social. In this book, practitioners from around the world have come together to author one hundred short chapters, each with an idea designed to help educators encourage their students to take an active learning approach to their studies.”
  • Action Research for Teaching and Learning Handbook, by Dr. Zabedia Nazim and Dr. Sowmya Venkat-Kishore. License: CC BY-NC-SA
    “​​This Open Educational Resource (OER) supports the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) by offering curated materials for educators and researchers. Designed as a comprehensive guide, it assists in understanding and applying Action Research in teaching and learning. The resource covers formulating research questions by reflecting on teaching practices and applying findings to enhance educational practice. It also walks the novice and avid researcher through foundational elements of research, serving as a valuable digital library for scholars interested in improving their teaching and learning practice in higher education by using Action Research.”
  • Applications of Educational Technology, by Susan Stansberry (2018). License: CC BY-NC
    “This course is an introduction to the design and development of instruction using educational media and technology. It involves development of teaching and learning materials using digital technologies, contemporary applications of computers and other electronic systems to instruction. Because this is a preservice education course, the main focus is on effective integration of educational technology and instructional design.”
  • The Asynchronous Cookbook, by DLINQ staff contributors (2021). License: CC BY-NC-SA
    “Whether you’re teaching mostly in person but looking for some regular, asynchronous activities to add to your course, or teaching a fully online course, this resource is for you. The activities in this cookbook draw on research and good practice in online course design to provide recipes – concise and specific instructions and examples – for adding asynchronous activities to a course. Meaningful interaction between students and instructors is a key ingredient in all of these recipes.”
  • Design for Learning: Principles, Processes, and Praxis, by Jason K. McDonald and Richard E. West (2021). License: CC BY-NC
    “Our purpose in this book is twofold. First, we introduce the basic skill set and knowledge base used by practicing instructional designers. We do this through chapters contributed by experts in the field who have either academic, research-based backgrounds, or practical, on-the-job experience (or both). Our goal is that students in introductory instructional design courses will be able to use this book as a guide for completing a basic instructional design project. We also hope the book is useful as a ready resource for more advanced students or others seeking to develop their instructional design knowledge and skills.”
  • Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology, by Richard E. West (2018). License: CC BY
    “”What is this field?” “Where have we come from as a discipline, and where are we going?” “What do I want to study?”These and other questions are typical for new students in the field of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. This textbook is designed to help answer these questions and provide the quickest route to understanding the history and current trends in the field. After surveying classic theories and writings, as well as more recent applications of theory and practice, students will be better prepared to chart their own course and careers within the discipline. This book is designed to support foundations courses common in departments, as well as seminars on current trends and issues.” 
  • Game Based and Adaptive Learning Strategies, by Carrie Lewis Miller, Odbayar Batsaikhan, and Elizabeth Pluskwik (2022). License: CC BY-NC
    “This material can be used to teach pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and instructional designers about game-based and adaptive learning.  Assessments […] are included in the final chapter and serve as recommendations for assessments of the learning outcomes. The material in this book pairs well with Using Game-Based Learning Online – A Cookbook of Recipes by The EGG.” 
  • Hybrid-Flexible Course Design, by Brian Beatty (2019). License: CC BY
    “This volume provides readers with methods, case stories, and strategies related to Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) course design so that they may make decisions about using it themselves and even begin their own HyFlex course (re)design. More specifically, based on the needs identified for their course(s), readers will be able to a) determine if and how HyFlex course design could help them solve critical needs, b) take advantage of emerging opportunities to improve their education practice, enabling them to better serve more students, c) gain an awareness of the HyFlex design, d) find their own innovative HyFlex solution to their specific challenges, and e) begin the HyFlex implementation process using strategies similar to those used by instructors described in this book. The volume describes the fundamental principles of HyFlex design, explains a process for design and development, and discusses implementation factors that instructors have experienced in various higher education institutions.”
  • Learning in the Digital Age, Rebecca Bayeck et al. (2020). License: CC BY
    “When discussing learning in the digital age, most focus on the technology first. However, the emphasis made in this book and the class is that it’s about the learner not just the technology. One of the things that is easy to lose track of when talking about learning in the digital age is the learner. Technology is important and it has significant impact but it is still about the person who is using the technology. Many people conflate learning in the digital age with technology in today’s age. This important misconception is common and results from our failure to examine our understanding of what “learning” really is.”

For more information about open educational resources, or to suggest additional resources, reach out to a member of the OER team. 

Anne Leonard (Interim OER Coordinator), aleonard@citytech.cuny.edu 
Joshua Peach (OER and Reference Librarian). jpeach@citytech.cuny.edu 
Jo Thompson (OER Librarian), jthompson@citytech.cuny.edu 

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