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 ZHAW members with their Open Education projects through courses or individual coaching sessions.
- 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 (ZHAW login required) 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).
Projects
SDSA: fAIr – fostering AI & recognition in Open Education
since 2025
«fAIr – fostering AI & recognition in Open Education», co-funded by ZHAW digital, is part of the swissuniversities-co-funded project “Swiss Digital Skills Academy 2025” (SDSA 2025). The OER team leads and pursues two goals: to develop an AI assistant for the generation and reuse of OER and to evaluate metrics and standards for OER.
SDSA: Create and Animate a Community
2021 to 2024
The ZHAW University Library actively participated in the Create and Animate a Community module of the Swiss Digital Skills Academy (SDSA) project co-financed by swissuniversities. Under the leadership of ETH Zurich and in cooperation with the Swiss Sport University Magglingen (SFISM), this module included the OER Conference 2021, the OER Creator Workshop 2022 and the OER Creator Workshop 2024.
Students4OER II: Open Pedagogy and Co-Creation
2023 to 2024
In the collaborative project Students4OER II (in German) with the ZHAW Institute for Environment and Natural Resources (IUNR), students were involved in the development of teaching materials and were able to publish their own project results on Github as OER. The project was funded by the ZHAW Sustainable Impact Program.
Students4OER competition
2022
Funded by the ZHAW Sustainable Impact Program, ZHAW students were asked to develop OER on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as part of the Students4OER (in German) project. As a result, 20 student videos, images, podcasts and other materials were published as OER.
