Open Educational Resources (OERs)

provides open license and useful materials relating to learning & teaching activities from prestigious universities around the world to support students and academics.

  • The term Open Educational Resources OERs was coined at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware as “teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.” (//en.unesco.org/themes/building-knowledge-societies/oer).
  • The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation defines Open Educational Resources (OER) as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge”.

On this page you will find some useful OERs relating to Tourism and Hospitality Management. You may find these resources useful for your classes. This page is kept up-to-date.

We welcome any feedbacks and recommendations. Please also with us those online resources that you use regularly in your teaching so that we can add them to this site. Email us at [email protected].

Open resources to seamlessly connect, share and communicate during the Covid-19

  • 365 Data Science (data science provider): It opens its Data Science Online program to all users until Apr. 15, 2020. Its’ program includes 21 courses, 600-plus exercises and 100-plus hours of video content. Coverage includes math, statistics, SQL, Python, data cleaning and visualization and machine and deep learning.
  • Avaya Spaces™ (communications provider): Avaya providing the business edition to educational and nonprofit organizations worldwide at no charge. With this easy-to-use cloud-based app, you can bring people, content and communications together –anywhere, across any device.
  • Barnes & Noble Education (writing service provider): It is making free digital self-tutoring and writing services available to college students through its bartleby suite of products. It provides students with access to 10 free homework questions and tutoring sessions with experts through bartleby learn, monthly; and premium access to bartleby write, a virtual writing center that provides spelling and grammar checks, plagiarism detection and citation help.
  • Bibliography.com (citation generator): Signing up for a free account gives you instant access to an ad-free citation generator for all your MLA, APA, Chicago and even Turabian citation needs. Create automatic citations for books, journals, websites, videos and more for school projects and research papers at the touch of a button.
    Quick, easy and not bogged down by ads, Bibliography.com is a great alternative to Chegg’s EasyBib or Citation Machine. You can save multiple bibliographies and download your citations in MS Word or paste them into your project. Bibliohtsphy.com is offering free accounts until 2021 to all students and teachers affected by the Coronavirus.
  • BibliU (online textbooks provider): has made its platform usage free until May 31, 2020, with access to textbooks, monographs and open educational resources maintained by participating publishers. The access is provided through BibliU’s learning platform, which gives students tools for doing quick search in digital textbook content and images, including the ability to highlight text and keep notes. The program integrates with library and university systems.
  • Bisk Education, Inc. (online program manager): Bisk, a global leader in digital learning, its self-paced training program covers essential instructional design principles for online course development, effective ways to engage learners online, and strategies for bringing a course online rapidly. Now Bisk extends its Best Practices for Effective Online Instruction training program for free to faculty and institutions worldwide in response to the COVID-19.
  • CanvasQuicker : CanvasQuicker was built for teachers by a teacher in response to the COVID 19 crisis. It lets teachers update modules, pages, assignments and due dates for classes all on one page, quickly, for free.
  • Cengage (educational content, technology, and services provider): It has made its digital content available for free through the remainder of the current term, giving students access to all digital textbooks and platforms through Cengage Unlimited. The company also said its faculty partners would be holding regular “office hours” to provide advice to instructors moving to Cengage courseware.
  • Kahoot! (game-based learning platform): Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that makes it easy to create, share and play learning games or trivia quizzes in minutes. Education institutions can get free access to Kahoot! Premium to empower distance and online learning and engage students anywhere, anytime.
  • Macmillan (publisher): offers FREE access to LaunchPad, Sapling, iClicker, or FlipIt to get you through the remainder of the spring 2020 semester and the winter 2020 quarter if you were not already using one of these digital products. Please search the catalog to see which digital product is available with your current Macmillan Learning textbook or course. (iClicker is available with ALL our products!).
  • Pronto (chat and video messaging provider): Pronto is a communication hub created for the everyday user. It connects people via chat and video, so they can learn faster, work smarter, and communicate seamlessly. Pronto provides its platform free for the 2020 Spring and Summer semesters to University professors dealing with Coronavirus and the related challenges that are interrupting teaching schedules so students don’t fall behind while they can’t meet face-to-face in the classroom.
  • Raftr (messaging and notifications service): Silicon Valley-based higher ed tech company, its app is designed to facilitate instant and direct communication between college administrations and their students in a mobile-first platform, including the ability to send direct messages instantly to students’ mobile devices. Raftr now offers its messaging and notifications platform free of charge through the end of the academic year to colleges and universities in the wake of Covid-19 concerns.
  • Rapid Transition to Online Learning RTOL: RTOL is a free emergency roadmap for making a rapid transition to remote learning during forced school closures. The resources include a checklist for administrators, another for IT managers, a transition plan and video tutorial for teachers and access to an international team of volunteers who have stepped forward to answer questions.
  • STR (data provider): STR provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for global hospitality sectors. STR offers STR Coronavirus landing page (which is updated daily) to see the latest news, stats and webinars. You can register for upcoming webinars for every area of the world and you can sign up to receive weekly updates. These presentations and articles show the types of data available: country and market performance, group versus transient differences, hotel closings, recovery discussions, comparisons to past events such as SARS, cancellation data, forward booking data, luxury/resort differences and ideas related to industry takeaways.
  • Top Hat (learning platform): Top Hat is education software built for professors and teaching faculty. Make your classroom come to life with the best active learning platform. Used by over 750 leading universities across North America.
    In response to COVID-19, Top Hat’s Platform is now free for Professors for the rest of the semester who need a Remote Teaching Solution. You can click here to get your course set up on Top Hat.
  • Wiley (publisher): a global leader in education and research, is aiming to ensure instructors who need to teach remotely have the necessary tools to help their students. Instructors without an adopted online learning solution, such as WileyPLUS, Knewton Alta or zyBooks, can receive free access for their students for the remainder of the Spring 2020 term. Instructors teaching at impacted institutions can request access to WileyPLUS or Knewton Alta here; instructors looking for zyBooks access can apply here.

Open Education Resources @Universities

Open Textbooks Collection

  • BC Campus OpenEd: This site includes texts written specifically for the BC OpenTextbook initiative, as well as books from other sources.
  • GALILEO Open Learning Content: GALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary material. Each document is classified by its Creative Commons license. You can reuse, redistribute, revise, remix, and retain these documents with particular restrictions.
  • HathiTrust : HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. HathiTrust materials can be searched through UWF Libraries’ Catalog.
  • JSTOR Open Access E-books: JSTOR offers a growing list of Open Access ebooks from respected presses, such as University of California Press and University of Michigan Press, at no cost to libraries or users. More than 100 titles are now available, and several hundred more will be added by the end of 2017.
  • Lumen Learning: Lumen provides open courses in a variety of high-demand subjects and disciplines. These courses are collections of high-quality OER, not necessarily as a traditional textbook.  You can use them as-is or modify them to fit your instructional style and students’ needs.
  • OpenStax: These books were developed following traditional textbook publishing methods, including peer review, editorial support, and creation of ancillary content. Books are available in multiple formats (PDF, print on demand, on the Web) and are licensed to be revised and remixed by faculty who want to create a custom solution for a course.
  • Open Access Publishing in European Networks: The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.  OAPEN has books in multiple languages and covering a large variety of topics. There is a range of licensing for the books, but each book is clearly marked with the license.
  • Open Oregon: Open Oregon provides textbooks across the sciences, English, business, as well as an introduction to Excel. Books are all CCBY license and available for download in multiple formats.
  • Open Textbook Library OTL: with over 350 books, is a clearinghouse of links to books in various locations, including OpenStax, Saylor and others. Books in the OTL have been peer reviewed for quality, and the Open Textbook Library has multiple criteria for inclusion in the Library.
  • Project Gutenberg: A volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works. Most items in this collection are digitized works from the public domain, making it a rich source for those in the Humanities.
  • Saylor.org Bookshelf: This collection includes books written specifically for Saylor.org as well as the original editions of the FlatWorldKnowledge textbooks (subsequent editions are only offered for purchase). You can view all their resources by subject area in their library.
  • SpringerOpen: The SpringerOpen offers researchers from all areas of science, technology, medicine, the humanities and social sciences a place to publish open access in journals and books. Publishing with SpringerOpen makes your work freely available online for everyone, immediately upon publication, and our high-level peer-review and production processes guarantee the quality and reliability of the work.
    Subjects search : Hospitality, Tourism, Hotel, Event Management, Wine
  • SUNY Open textbooks: Openly licensed textbooks and courses written and curated by SUNY Faculty. Also provides links to other OER initiatives across the state of New York.
  • Teaching Commons: “The Teaching Commons showcases high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities and makes them available to educators and students around the world.”
  • The Directory of OpenAccess Books: This site is a clearinghouse of links to books hosted in various locations and includes a large selection of international textbooks.
  • The National Academies Press: Unlike some of the open textbook initiatives these books are publicly available but not openly licensed.  You can link to the content, and even link directly to specific pages.  However, you cannot remix and redistribute the content.

Open Courses, Talks and Videos

  • Edx – Open courses from leading universities on the world
    Specific subjects: Communicating strategically, Digital branding and engagement, Leadership, Public speaking, Reputation management in Digital world, Tourism, Hospitality management.
    EdX is an online learning destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners everywhere. Currently, Edx is offering thousands of courses in various subjects for different levels of studying.
  • LinkedIn Learning – Online Course (free 1-month trial)
    Learning content across business, creative and technical categories – 15,000+ online courses. It is easy access to online/offline content via desktop & mobile, personalized daily micro-learning, possibility to link with your LinkedIn profile to improve your learning experience – not mandatory! It is data-driven personalization with curated recommendations, unique & curated learning paths, fully localized content available in 7 languages (English, Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Chinese, Portuguese) Training recommendations for successful virtual workshops
    • Creating effective online learning (46 m): Technology has changed the nature of education—and the jobs of educators. Online instruction requires different methods to help students learn. This course is designed to help corporate trainers and teachers update their skill sets to teach effectively online.
    • Learning to Run Webinars (1 h 37 m): Webinars can help you attract new customers and build client relationships, but only if they’re smart and engaging. In this course, author, webinar expert, and instructional designer Sally Norred walks you through the basics of creating webinars for your business.
    • Teaching Techniques: Blended Learning (46 m): Blended learning is all about the students: combining instruction with digital resources to help increase student achievement and engagement. In this course, Chris Mattia explores the various aspects of blended learning, and provides guidelines to create a blended classroom that meets students’ diverse learning needs.
    • Workshop Facilitation (1 h): In this course, Britt Andreatta, PhD, discusses the role of the facilitator, and walks you through how to effectively design, prepare for, and facilitate a workshop.
  • MERLOT
    MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is an online repository and international consortium of institutions (and systems) of higher education, industry partners, professional organizations and individuals. The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
  • Ted Talks
    TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages.
    Keywords search: Hospitality, Tourism,

Conference Papers, Journal Articles, Reports and Theses

  • Adelaide Research & Scholarship
    The repository provides open access to thousands of research outputs in Tourism and Hospitality Management at The University of Adelaide
  • Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ)
    OAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available.
  • Digital Scholarship@UNLV
    Digital Scholarship@UNLV is the institutional repository of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It holds scholarship from UNLV faculty, staff and students. Digital Scholarship@UNLV provides a wider audience to the scholarly output of UNLV as well as assures its long-term preservation.
    Many studies in Tourism and Hospitality Management are available for free access on this portal.
  • Florida International University – Digital Commons
    Florida International University (FIU) Digital Commons is a full text, online, open access repository and publishing platform for the scholarship and creative output of FIU. It provides free resources in Tourism and Hospitality and in other topics.
  • Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Management
    The journal is published by the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Opatija, Croatia in cooperation with T.E.I. – Alexandreion Technological Educational Institution of Thessaloniki, Department of Tourism Management, Thessaloniki, Greece and, untill 2012, with the WIFI Institut for Economic Promotion, Austrian Economic Chamber, Vienna, and Austria. The journal is supported by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport of the Republic of Croatia. The papers can be used for personal, scientific, educational and research purposes, provided that the credit is given. The papers are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license.
    Tourism and hospitality management is a Sherpa/RoMEO blue journal.
  • Rochester Institute of Technology Scholar Works
    RIT Scholar Works is the digital institutional repository for the Rochester Institute of Technology, managed by RIT Libraries at The Wallace Center. It contains the products of the research, scholarly, and creative pursuits of RIT’s faculty, staff, and students. Contents of this repository include, but are not limited to: Articles, Electronic books and book chapters, Student theses and dissertations, Open access publications (journals published by RIT Open Access Publishing), Schedules and proceedings for conferences hosted by RIT. All of the materials in RIT Scholar Works are open access and fully accessible.
  • ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst
    ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst is a digital repository for the research and scholarly output of members of the University of Massachusetts Amherst community, administered by the UMass Amherst Libraries. It offers Hospitality & Tourism Management Masters Theses Collection from 2007 to 2013.

Webinars