OER - Open Educational Resources
- Introduction
- Get Started
- Find
- Adopt
- Adapt
- Create
- Repositories
- OER for Images, Search Engines and Audiovisual Resources
- Glossary of Terms
How to Start
Creating an OER
Creating an OER is a different process than creating educational materials that will be published and distributed by a traditional publisher or even just distributed to your own students. When you author an OER, you contribute your knowledge freely and openly to a global community. That OER becomes community property, which can be used and changed--often without you even being aware of it. You should be willing to share editable files of your OER to allow others to make changes and/or add to it in the form of an adaptation, and you should consider maintaining your OER by updating the content as necessary and correcting any mistakes. This allows for the ongoing quality, relevance, and sustainability of your OER.
Steps for creating an OER:
- Plan
- Pick a Tool
- Make Accessible
- Share
- Update & Evaluate
Check out BC Campus book Self-Publishing Guide. This guide is a reference for individuals or groups wanting to write and self-publish an open textbook. This guide provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook.
Creating OER and Combining Licenses
Plan your OER
As you're developing your OER project, take some time to explore the following guiding questions:
- Does the OER you need already exist? Could your own teaching materials be adapted for use as OER?
- How do you define your student and faculty audiences?
- For which course(s) could your OER be used?
- Do you plan on developing additional materials (i.e., exercises, workbook) to accompany your OER?
- What expertise is required to create your OER?
Adapted from The OER Starter Kit by Abbey K. Elder, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Pick a Tool
You can use many of the same tools that you currently use to create educational resources for your courses to create OERs, but you may want to consider using tools that were developed especially for creating OERs, which contain features that will facilitate openness, discoverability, accessibility, and sharing.
Below are a list of criteria to consider when choosing which tool you'd like to use to create your OER:
- Types of OER Supported: Does this tool allow you to create text-based or multimedia resources, or course modules that may contain both?
- Special Characters: If you plan to create a resource that will include special character/equations, does this tool support that?
- Accessibility: Does this tool facilitate creating content that is accessible?
- Sharing/Licensing: Does this tool allow you to easily apply a Creative Commons license?
- Hosting: Does this tool allow you to host your OER on an existing OER platform, with a permanent link for sharing?
- Export Options: Does this tool allow you to export your content to a format that others can reuse and share? Could your students export to a printable format, if they so choose?
- Cost: What will this tool cost to use? For you? For students? Will students have to create an account in order to view your OER? If so, what are the tool's terms of use, and how does it manage your students' personal data?
Created and hosted by OER Commons, Open Author has a Resource Builder for creating text-based resources using a Google Docs-esque editor and a Module Builder for creating a course module that could include student and instructor instructions, sequenced tasks, and supporting resources. Special features include the ability to embed multimedia content, a Google Docs import option, authoring tools that make it easier to create accessible content, and MathML support. Once published, OERs are hosted on OER Commons, making them easily accessible and discoverable online. You can export your OER in a variety of formats.
You'll Need: Free OER Commons account
When You Should Use It: If you're creating a text-based OER that you want others to be able to easily find, read, and re-use
Based on Wordpress, Pressbooks is an ebook creation tool, which also provides a number of helpful features for creating a textbook, including automatically generated front and back matter, a collection of themes for easily modifying the appearance, LaTeX support, and hosting on Pressbooks.
You'll Need: Pressbooks account. With the free account, your finished book will contain a watermark on each page, but the paid version will get you watermark-free files. The web version of your book will also be private, unless you upgrade your account.
When You Should Use It: If you're creating an open textbook, Pressbooks is one of the best tools available--but note that you will have to pay a fee in order to get files that you can share.
Created by GitHub, GitBooks is an open source tool that allows you to create a textbook that is hosted in a GitHub repository. You can create your content in Markdown or embed rich, multimedia content. There is currently no PDF export option. This tool was originally developed for creating technical documentation guides, so it does not have as many of the features of other OER tools.
You'll Need: Free account with Gitbook (or GitHub). There are some limitations on number of collaborators and spaces for the free account.
When You Should Use It: If you're creating an open textbook, are familiar with GitHub, and want to use the features provided by GitHub (versioning, collaboration, etc.) but in a "book" format.
- PubPub PubPub is a collaborative writing and publishing platform from MIT's Knowledge Futures group. The basic level for free allows for robust drafting, editing, and publishing features, as well as a URL at pubpub.org and e-mail support.
- WeBWorK WeBWorK is an open-source online homework system for math and science courses. Instructors can create problem sets or use material from existing libraries. Current courses include college algebra, discrete mathematics, probability and statistics, single and multivariable calculus, differential equations, linear algebra and complex analysis.
- See more OER authoring tools From SUNY Empire.
- Open Education Self-Publishing Guide The BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide is a reference for individuals or groups wanting to write and self-publish an open textbook.This guide provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook. Copyright, open-copyright licences, and the differences between citation and attribution are discussed as well as the importance of copy editing and proofreading. Checklists and templates are also provided. This guide replaces the BCcampus Open Education Authoring Guide.
- Authoring Open Textbooks by the Open Textbook Network 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.
- A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students (from the Open Textbook Network) 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.
- SUNY Empire Authoring Tools Guide A clearinghouse of OER, including learning object repositories, open course repositories, scholarly repositories, open textbooks, and information about open learning/education in general.
- 80 Open Educational Resources tools Includes 80 online resources that you can use to learn how to build or participate in a collaborative educational effort that focuses on publication and development of those materials. Although some choices focus solely on publication, development, or tools used to accomplish either effort, some provide multifaceted venues that offer communities in which to collaborate on one or all of these efforts.
- Rights Reversion and Open Textbooks If you've published a textbook that is several years old, you might be able to use Rights Reversion to obtain the rights to publish a new version as an Open Textbook. Read this story about Dale Cannon's successful negotiation for rights to his book.
Make Accesible
Making your OER accessible means making sure that people of all abilities can access your content.
The time to think about accessibility is when you're starting an OER project. Will the tool/platform you choose to create your OER help you to create an accessible resource? What actions can you take to serve users with all types of abilities?
- BCcampus Open Education Accessibility Toolkit
An overview of accessibility concerns and best practices to use when creating accessible OERs. The toolkit also has an Accessibility Checklist for evaluating your OER.
- Accessibility of Online Content
Tutorials, tools, and best practices for making online course content accessible, compiled by Portland Community College. Addresses how to make accessible resources in MS Office, PDF, and Google Docs.
Share your OER
When you finish your OER, you'll need to find a place where you can make it accessible to others. Before sharing, consider:
- What supplemental materials do you want to provide with your resource: slides, video transcripts, assignments?
- How “editable” can you make your resource (i.e., use open file formats, provide editable source files)?
- Which Creative Commons license do you want to put on it?
- On what platform do you want to share your resource?
You could store your OER on a personal website or on a cloud platform, such as Google Drive or Dropbox; however, it may be hard for others to find your OER on these sites, and these sites may not be permanent. Below are some additional options for hosting your OER.
Internal repository- Contact your department area to see if an internal repository has been created. If not, create one!
Bristol Community College OER Commons Repository - Join our group of collaborators and upload your work here.
Maintain and Evaluate
The most effective OER are those with authors who actively maintain them by gathering feedback, fixing errors, and creating revisions and new editions.
Maintain your OER by:
- Inviting feedback from your readers, such as through a form or via email, or by enabling comments.
- Allowing readers to report errors, through a form or via email, and recording corrected errors, by adding an erratum or recording changes on a Versioning History page.
- Tracking adoptions. Gathering statistics about the use of your OER can help to measure your impact and promote your work.
After creating OER to use in your courses, you can also evaluate them by researching the effect of your adoption of OER. Check out the OER Research Toolkit, a guidebook and additional resources, including surveys, for researching the effect of adoption of OER.
Adapted from "Maintain the Book" by Lauri Aesoph, BCcampus, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Last Updated: Sep 4, 2024 10:15 AM
- URL: https://libguides.bristolcc.edu/open
- Print Page