This month’s highlighted resource is OASIS. OASIS is a metafinder developed by SUNY, a tool that searches across different collections and repositories for content, thus making discovery a little easier. Think of a metasearch tool in much the same way you think of Google. It searches multiple websites at one time thus saving you the exertion of having to search each separately.

Why Use OASIS?

OASIS is an excellent place to start your search to give you an overview of “what’s out there” from which you can further refine your search if necessary. It’s especially helpful in finding a variety of different types of OER as opposed to just textbooks. Another example of a good metasearch tool is the Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) housed as George Mason University.

Currently OASIS searches over 117 different sources and contains over 389,000 records. Including: Textbooks (2,494), Courses (6,448), Course Materials (3,248), Interactive Simulations (2,360), Public Domain Books (83,970), Audiobooks (9,976), Modules (31,176), Open Access Books (74,525), Videos (6,120), Podcasts (376), Learning Objects (2,325), and Primary Sources (165,678).

Starting Your Search

You can start your search in OASIS in three ways:

1. “Google-like” search box on landing page
2. Search “OER by Subject” from the pull-down menu
3. Go directly to “Advanced Search” where you have a variety of filter options, including subject and source.

My preferred way of starting a search is by SUBJECT.

For example, if you select the Business subject, you will see a wide variety of content located under this tag, from textbooks and courseware to open access books, content that isn’t typically included in OER repositories.

Filters

Just like with any search tool, once you’ve done a search, you will want to apply one or more filters. There are five filters:

1. Type (resource type),
2. Subject,
3. Source (collection or repository),
4. License (type of CC license), and
5. Review (whether the resource has reviews from faculty on its platform).

Note that both “Subject” and “Source” is context-specific to “Content Type.” So, you will retrieve different results for Subject and Source depending on what content type has been selected. Additionally, it is worth noting that “Reviewed resources” includes only those that have reviews from faculty within a repository. There are many peer-reviewed OER which do not fall under this tag because they are too new to have reviews from adopters.

Back to my search example of Business (refer to Fig. 3), the following Filters were available to narrow or further refine my search: Type, Subject, Source, License, Review. (photo only displays “Type” and part of “Subject”). If I select only the filters for “Textbook” and “Reviewed Resources,” I will retrieve 31 results.

Note: One caveat worth pointing out is that OASIS may retrieve duplicate content since it pulls from multiple databases. Because of this, you may see the same book listed multiple times, once for each database where it is indexed.

To learn more about these resources, or to preview them, all you need to do is click through to look at the original source. For example, this search found me the text, Introduction to Business from OpenStax.

In conclusion, OASIS is a great place to start your OER discovery journey. The search interface is intuitive and easy to navigate. It lists many different types of OER, as well as subject areas. It offers multiple ways to refine your search by offering a variety of filters.

Get Involved!

Have a recommendation for a future resource for us to highlight? Contact Us through our website or join our listserv to share your favorite OER tool or resource with other faculty and staff in the state of Iowa!