Lumen Learning vs OER Commons
Lumen Learning
lumenlearning.comOER Commons
oercommons.orgSide by side
| Figure | Lumen Learning | OER Commons |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Open Educational Resource Platforms | 7.9 (#9) | 7.6 (#14) |
| Accessibility | Lumen aims to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA criteria and describes screen-reader text, image alt text, video captions and transcripts, and text alternatives for interactives. | Open Author includes an accessibility checker, requires alt text for embedded images, and automatically captions videos uploaded to an Open Author resource. |
| Founded | 2012 | 2007 |
| Purpose | Lumen Learning is an educational technology company that develops affordable digital courseware and faculty professional development resources for higher education. | OER Commons is an openly accessible digital library for educators to find high-quality open educational resources and collaborate around their use, evaluation, and improvement. |
| Support | The standard course support fee includes LMS integration, editing capabilities, online homework, personalized learning tools, and technical and faculty support. | ISKME provides content curation by digital librarians and directs organizations to contact [email protected] about product and service offerings. |
Plans
Lumen Learning
- Per Student Course Support Fee$35, paid once
- Success Accelerator for Waymaker and OHM$350, paid once
- Lumen Circles Fellowship$750, paid once
- Annualized PricingPrice not published
In their own words
Lumen Learning
Lumen Learning develops digital courseware and faculty professional development resources for higher education. Its course materials replace textbooks with interactive text, video, simulations, practice questions, updated content, and mobile-friendly access. The catalog covers more than 50 subjects, with a focus on introductory, general education, and developmental courses. Lumen One offers personalized study plans, immediate feedback, student-faculty connection tools, a peer community, and teaching-practice tips. Courseware can be customized after delivery into Canvas, Blackboard Learn, D2L Brightspace, or Moodle and adjusted for different term lengths. Mobile access works through common browsers on iOS and Android without an app. Static courseware text and images are open educational resources. The course support fee is $35/term. Additional options include professional development priced per seat.
OER Commons
OER Commons is a free web-based digital library for finding open educational resources and collaborating on their use, evaluation and improvement. It serves K–12 and higher education educators, librarians and homeschooling parents. A free account, priced at free, provides library access, Open Author for creating or publishing resources, groups, collaboration to curate or remix content, and a personal profile for saved resources. Organizations can use Hubs to develop collections, manage content and facilitate conversations. Custom microsites can have their own libraries and domains, tailored metadata and content creation, and analytics dashboards. Open Author includes an accessibility checker, requires alt text for embedded images and automatically captions videos uploaded to a resource. ISKME offers data and API integration services for learning management systems; its tools can receive and provide harvestable content feeds in Dublin Core, IEEE Learning Object Metadata and RSS. ISKME reports completed accessibility audits and another review underway, but authors and users remain responsible for resource accessibility, and many indexed materials are hosted externally. Resources created in legacy Open Author 1 are scheduled for removal on December 31, 2026; Open Author 2 resources are unaffected.