Many faculty members of Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences create digital educational resources for use by students in Penn State courses. Faculty participants in the college's Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative have contributed their work on the OER site voluntarily for use by teachers and learners around the world who can't afford to enroll in formal classes, or who don't need to earn academic credit. The OER initiative was launched by the college in 2007.
UPDATE
In 2021, the college’s OER website was adopted by the University to become ROAM, the University’s Repository for Open and Affordable Materials, supported by the University Libraries. Through ROAM, all of Penn State's departments and individual faculty are now able to provide educational resources free of charge under a Creative Commons license. As long as they adhere to the license, teachers and learners around the world are free to download, remix, translate, localize, and adapt these materials for their own purposes.
Visit the Repository of Open and Affordable Materials (ROAM) to learn more.