LibGuides: Economics: Open Education Resources

Using Internet Resources

When using internet resources, you need to be careful, as most websites do not undergo peer review. It is therefore important to evaluate the website that you use to get your information from.

Be particularly careful when consulting Wikipedia and similar internet sites as the authority and reliability of the content cannot be guaranteed.

When deciding if a webpage is reliable, you should ask yourself the following questions.

	Reasoning
Who?	Only cite authors who have some credentials that qualify them to talk about the subject.
What?	Identify the type of research you need--most online forums, blogs, or presentations are not peer reviewed.
When?	Use research from websites that are regularly maintained to insure that the information isn't outdated.
Where?	Material should be available on academic websites--pay attention to the quality of the website. Avoid .coms and .nets.
Why?	Know why you need the information, and also why the information was published. Avoid biased websites.
How?	Webpages should cite their information so you know how the information was gathered.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property licence that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. (Hewlett Foundation, OER Defined).

Source: https://www.oerafrica.org/understanding-oer/definitions

The links listed below are just a sample of what can be found at the OER Commons and on the OER Africa website. There are many more, so please look at the site...

Principles of Microeconomics 2e

Principles of Macroeconomics 2e

Principles of Economics 2e

MIT Open CourseWare (OCW) is a free database which provides the lecture notes, exams and videos from 1,900 MIT courses

Please find below examples of an Open Education Resource (OER) that contains searchable, peer reviewed online learning materials relating particularly to Economics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and so on:

Merlot: Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching - Economics

Merlot: Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching - Microeconomics

Merlot: Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching - Macroeconomics