Guides: Open Educational Resources: OER Usage Basics

OER Basics - Courses and Tutorials

Texas Learn OER
Self-paced course consisting of 10 learning modules created by DigiTex.
more...less...
Except where otherwise noted, Texas Learn OER by Carrie Gits for DigiTex is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License . 2020
OER Starter Kit
The OER Starter Kit Workbook is a remix of the OER Starter Kit to include worksheets to help instructors practice the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create open educational resources (OER). We welcome instructors, librarians, instructional designers, administrators, and anyone else interested in OER to explore the OER Starter Kit Workbook. By Abbey Elder and Stacy Katz at CUNY.
Open Educational Practice and Professional Learning
Comprehensive list of courses, guides, and tutorials on Open Educational Practices including the OER Commons Virtual Academy
more...less...
OER Commons. A project created by ISKME. Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
Finding Free and Open Resources
A chapter-by-chapter informational tutorial for educators interested in replacing expensive commercial textbooks with affordable resources. Developed by the University System of Georgia.
more...less...
Unless otherwise indicated, the content of this tutorial is under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
OER Toolkit
Open Educational Resources (OER) provide equal access to resources at no cost to students. This toolkit provides information and tools to help faculty and library staff across all publicly funded colleges in Ontario to understand, engage with, and sustain OER in their work and practice. Produced by the College Libraries of Ontario.
Intro to Open Education
This website supports the Fall 2018 offering of IPT 531: Introduction to Open Education at Brigham Young University, taught by David Wiley and Olga Belikov. And because it’s published openly, it also contains all the information you need to participate informally in the class. You can read the readings, watch the videos, create and share the artifacts, and participate in the course discussions on Twitter, blogs, and elsewhere.
more...less...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Open Education Leadership Program Curriculum
The SPARC Open Education Leadership Program curriculum runs over two semesters, corresponding to the academic year. It begins with an intensive online course in the fall, followed by an independent capstone project with mentorship support in the spring. Fellows complete the program as part of a cohort of peers that adds a rich layer of ongoing support, community, and knowledge-sharing on top of the curriculum. The program is facilitated by an instructor who provides ongoing feedback, support, and evaluation.

Evaluating Content

As the subject expert, you are the person most qualified to judge the quality of an OER. However, several criteria may help you evaluate an OER's potential value to your course.

Comprehensiveness

The text covers all areas and ideas of the subject appropriately and provides an effective index and/or glossary.

Content Accuracy

Content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity

Content is up-to-date, but not in a way that will become quickly obsolete. The information is presented and arranged in a way that is easily updated as needed.

Clarity

The text is written in lucid, accessible prose and provides adequate context for any jargon or technical terminology.

Consistency

The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework.

Modularity

The text is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course (i.e., enormous blocks of text without subheadings should be avoided). The text should not be overly self-referential and should be easily reorganized and realigned with various subunits of a course without presenting much disruption to the reader.

Organization/Structure/Flow

The topics in the text are presented in a logical, clear fashion.

Interface

The text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.

Grammatical Errors

The text contains no grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. It should make use of examples that are inclusive of a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.

This information is adapted from the Open Textbook Library, originally developed by the BC Campus. It is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

For rubrics to use in your assessment, consider the following:

iRubric: Evaluating OER Open access rubric that is freely available for use and modification.
Faculty guide for evaluating OER - BCOER A checklist created by the BCOER, a group of BC post-secondary librarians working together to support the use of quality Open Educational Resources (OER). For more information about BCOER and its activities, go to open.bccampus.ca.
Open Textbook Library Evaluation Criteria

Adopting OERs

Adopting an OER is a matter simply of adding a link in the syllabus and letting students know that it is free (or low-cost) to access and use.

For guidance, consider one of the following:

BCcampus Open Education Adoption Guide Adoption Guide - 2nd Edition by Lauri Aesoph, BCcampus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Open Textbook Adoption Woksheet This Worksheet was developed by Dr. Judy Baker, Director of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources. January 21, 2008 and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. For examples of each Step, see http://cnx.org/content/m15767/latest/
Adopting Open Educational Resources in the Classroom This course provides faculty with an introduction to the laws that influence the use, re-use, and distribution of content they may want to use in a course. Activities include finding openly licensed content for use in a class and publishing openly licensed works created by faculty. At the end of the course, students will have openly licensed content that will be ready for use in a course.

Open Educational Resources

OER Basics - Courses and Tutorials

Evaluating Content

Adopting OERs

University Libraries