Sue Shaffer Learning Commons and Library: Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Creating OER

Where to Begin

The OER Starter Kit by Abbey Elder
Publication Date: 2019
This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education.

Are you interested in creating your own OER?

This can mean:

Authoring a completely new textbook.
Remixing existing content.
Adapting existing content.

If you're interested, contact the UCC Library for information about grants, existing OER for your subject, and tips for getting started.

Considerations

When planning to use an open textbook or other OER in your course, it is important to plan and ask yourself the following questions:

Are there high-quality OER available in my field?
Do I know how to evaluate the OER that is available to me effectively?
Do I want/need to adapt an existing OER to tailor it to my course?
Do I have the time and/or resources to create a new OER for my course?

After asking these questions, you can decide whether to adopt, adapt, or create a new OER for use in your course.

Adopt, Adapt, or Create?

Various options are available to faculty interested in including OER in their courses. These options are listed below:

Adopt

If there are high quality, vetted Open Educational Resources available on the topic your course covers, and you do not feel the need to edit or otherwise alter them for use in your course, you might consider adopting them for use "as is." Adopting is the simplest way of including OER in your course and the least time-intensive.

Adapt/Build

If there are OER available on the topic your course covers, but they are dated, too broad, or contain information which is beyond the scope of your course, you may want to consider adapting the materials. After checking that the Creative Commons license attached to the materials allows for adaptation, you may choose to edit the materials to tailor them to your course.

Alternately, if there are OER available on the topic your course covers, but no single resource is broad enough to cover the needs of your course, you may want to consider building a "course pack," a selection of various OER, free online materials, and websites which make up the resources for use in a course. These packs can be extremely versatile and adaptable resources.

Create

If there are no high-quality OER available on your topic or if you have course materials that you believe are superior to the OER available to you online, you may want to consider creating or licensing your course materials. Creating Open Educational Resources can be as simple as openly licensing and sharing a syllabus you currently use or sharing lesson plans on OER repositories like OER Commons.

Authoring OERs

A selection of guides to aid authors in the creation of OERs.

Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition
The goal of the Accessibility Toolkit - 2nd Edition is to provide resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook—one that is free and accessible for all students. This is a collaboration between BCcampus, Camosun College, and CAPER-BC.
Authoring Open Textbooks
This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools.
Guide to Developing Open Textbooks
This how to guide has been developed to assist teachers, teaching support personnel and educational technology administrators to: understand the value of open education, OER and open textbooks for teaching and learning; appreciate the potential value of developing an open textbook platform; select appropriate technology to build an open textbook platform, using either existing services offered free on the Internet or open-source tools, based on local needs and resources; and build, manage and maintain an open textbook platforms.
Guide to Making Open Textbooks With Students
A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources. This is a first edition, compiled by Rebus Community, and we welcome feedback and ideas to expand the text.
Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know
A brief, 5-step guide on how to edit an open textbook for use in your course.
OER Commons: Creating with Open Author
Open Author helps you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you and for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere.
Open Educational Practice
OER Commons' Open Educational Practice Hub includes resources for educators about how to find, curate, evaluate, share, and license OER. Other topics, like OER Advocacy, are also covered.

Evaluating OERs

Here are a few steps you might take in the evaluation process. If this process seems lengthy, think about the process you follow to review textbooks and other materials for your course. You can use a similar or modified evaluation process.

That the content under consideration covers the subject area appropriately
That the content of the OER is accurate and free of major errors and spelling mistakes
That the license of the content can be used or altered for the course's needs
That the OER is clearly written and appropriate for the students' level of understanding
That the accessibility of the content is appropriate for all students

Examples of rubrics for evaluating OER are available below:

Achieve's Rubrics for Evaluating OER
Achieve.org has developed a rubric with 8 core principles found in high quality OER.
Faculty Guide for Evaluating OER
Developed by BCCampus OpenEd Resources (BCOER), this document provides a checklist of traits to look out for in OER.
Open Textbook Network Review Rubric
This is the review rubric that is used in the Open Textbook Network's Library, developed by BCcampus.

OER Toolkits

Here are a few toolkits to help aid you in the OER creation process.

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.
Authoring Open Textbooks
This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools.
Open Education Self-Publishing Guide
This guide was arranged into sections that take the open-textbook author through the following steps of the writing and publishing process.
Open Washington Open Attribution Builder
Helps you to build a Creative Commons attribution
SPARC Open Education Leadership Program
The SPARC Open Education Leadership Program is a two-semester professional development initiative aimed at building expertise and capacity to advance open education in libraries. Over two semesters, the program blends online, peer-to-peer, and project-based learning opportunities to develop participants into both subject matter experts on open education and advocates with the practical know-how to advance OER initiatives on campus. Each year the program will accept a cohort of fellows, who upon successful completion will receive a certificate and the title of SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow. The target audience is academic and research library professionals at colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, with particular emphasis on those early in their careers.

Accessibility

Besides their general quality, the accessibility of OER is also an important factor to consider, especially in light of the online nature of most OER. Information about creating and evaluating the accessibility of OER is listed below. Contact the UCC Library and/or UCC Online for help with making sure that your course content is accessible.

Open Education Accessibility Toolkit
Provides the resources needed so that each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, teaching assistant, etc. has the opportunity to create a truly open and accessible textbook.
Created by BC Campus.
W3C: Accessibility
This page from the Web Accessibility Initiative provides information about creating and hosting accessible content online.
WAVE: Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. Our philosophy is to focus on issues that we know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.

Additional Resources

The resources on this page provide additional information about Open Educational Resources: How To guides, workshops, and fact sheets are provided below.

7 Things You Should Know About OER
A brief guide to common questions asked about OER, such as "What are the downsides?" and "Who's doing it?"
Open at the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Open Education
This book represents a starting point towards curating and centering marginal voices and non-dominant epistemic stances in open education. It includes the work of 43 diverse authors whose perspectives challenge the dominant hegemony.
Open Washington OER Modules
An open workshop available online through Open Washington, the modules include information on licensing OER, the public domain, accessibility, and more.
Open Washington Open Attribution Builder
Helps you to build a Creative Commons attribution