Edinburgh at its best

Open educational resource initiatives
 
 

Edinburgh’s Treasures

Open online collections
 
 

Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable Development Goals We believe that OER can make a critical contribution to achieving the aims of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which the University and Students Association are committed to through the SDG Accord. We have collected OERs from our showcase that are in line with specific SDG and listed them for ease of educators wishing to find SDG aligned resources. Sustainable Development Goal OERs

Blog Posts

Wiki loves Monuments 2026 – The world’s largest photo competition returns
September 2, 2026 4:14 pm by Ewan McAndrew
The world’s largest photo competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, returns this month for its 16th year. Eight years ago, Scotland was voted the most beautiful country in the world in a Rough Guide readers’ poll. For some reason we’re not in the top 20 this year …. but hey ho, there’s still nowhere quite like it. […]
For Those in Peril on the Sea: Mapping Scotland’s lighthouses on Wikipedia
September 2, 2026 3:19 pm by Ewan McAndrew
Join us for an expert-led guided tour of the exhibition ‘For the Safety of All: Scotland’s Lighthouses’ followed by a fun and interactive Wikipedia edit-a-thon on Wed 23rd September. Let’s improve coverage of Scottish lighthouses in a stunning, historical building of the National Records of Scotland and turn Wikipedia’s “red links” (pages that don’t YET […]
Cambridge canal A Conversation Between the OER Interns
August 27, 2026 4:12 pm by Sanika Prakash
Sanika Prakash Hi, I’m Sanika. I’m going into my fourth year of History of Art and English Literature and I’ve [...]
Cloudy sunset behind buildings Open Educational Resources intern update
August 7, 2026 10:58 am by Charlotte Ness
With the first two months of my internship racing past in a flurry of Forrest Hill-brewed earl grey and sunny lunches in the meadows (alas, a rarer occurrence as we settle into a gloomy early August), this ‘mid-way’ blog post finds itself suddenly overdue. So far, I have published an entire set of OERs created by former GeoSciences outreach students, and am now recognised as a formal co-editor and contributor to the early stages of a new open textbook! Alongside regularly attending various other meetings and workshops, it is no wonder that the time seems to have flown by. 
Clouds Useless Interns and the Fragile Internet
July 22, 2026 4:39 pm by Sanika Prakash
The Open.Ed site has over 500 OER posts and about an equal number of blog posts, and I’ve been going through them manually in an audit, which has been time-consuming and repetitive.  When I’ve been asked about my job, many people have wondered why the whole process isn’t just automated. I’ve had a lot of questions on why I didn’t just use AI or code to scrape all of the data from WordPress and have believed that I had one of those ‘vanity internships’, where I get an experience for my LinkedIn but offer no real benefit for the company.  There are two very good reasons for this; copyright and the fragility of digital information. 

OER Channels

Edinburghs OERs
OERs from across the University

TES Resources
Award winning open resources for school teachers.

Short Online Courses
Free short online courses.

Edinburgh Diamond
Open Access ebooks & journals.

Open Media Bank
Videos from our MOOCs & free short online courses.

Media Hopper Create
Creative Commons licensed videos.

Open Media Stock Footage
Open licensed media snippets for downloading & reuse.

Wikimedian in Residence
Videos from our Wikimedian in Residence.

3D Models
Open licensed models of heritage, geology & anatomy artefacts.