OER: Best Practices

"OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."  - The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

"[OERs are] digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences." - OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)

"[OERs are] teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." - UNESCO

"[O]pen educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms. Whenever possible, they should also be available in formats that are accessible to people with disabilities and people who do not yet have access to the Internet." - The Cape Town Open Education Declaration

"The term "Open Educational Resource(s)" (OER) refers to educational resources (lesson plans, quizzes, syllabi, instructional modules, simulations, etc.) that are freely available for use, reuse, adaptation, and sharing." - The Wikieducator OER Handbook

"Open Educational Resources are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse, without charge. OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license that state specifically how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared." - OER Commons

1) Know Your Stakeholders

• Administration
  • President
  • Provost
  • Deans
  • Dept. Heads/Chairs
• Faculty
• Students
• Campus Bookstore
• Librarians
• University Press
• CETL Director
• Business Affairs
• Instructional Designer
• IT
• Distance/eLearning

2) Identify needs/motivations of the key stakeholders

3) Form A Textbook Affordability Council with representative campus stakeholders.

4) CETL Workshops - get with your teaching and learning center and host workshops about OER adoption

How to...

• Find OERs - tips on how to search for OERs
  • look at our tab on OER tools
  • ask your campus librarian
• Assessing OERs
  • most good OER sites have reviews and commentary about the resources
  • see who the creator is - are they experts in the field?
• Adopt OERs
  • Found one you like? Use it! Most OERs will have instructions on how to adopt and use the material. If the material includes assessment content, you may have to contact the creator in order to access those portions.
• Adapt OERs
  • Find an OER that's "close", and - if the license permits - adapt it where necessary.  Sometimes that may be tweaking a module, other times it's rearranging the content's order.  That's the beauty of OER - they're imminently flexible!
• Create OERs
  • This is the most challenging aspect of OERs. If you can't find anything you like that's out there, even to adapt, you may want to create your own. 
  • Think of it as developing a class. Start with an outline of what the course / module needs.
  • Create the text / lectures / powerpoints / videos / other content and decide how you will make those available to students
  • Consider asking for a course release or wait until summer when you're less busy with classes
• License & Share
  • check out Creative Commons!
• Citing OERs
  • if you're reusing an OER, check the license requirements for how to cite and reuse
• Teach using OERs (OER Pedagogy)