OER 101 registration now open for Fall 2024!

4.1 At-Home

Finding OER
Evaluating OER using established criteria

Estimated time to complete: 1.5 hours

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a single repository where you could type in a few keywords and find all the relevant OER that you can use in your class? Even better, wouldn't it be great to have an OER course developed that you could just copy and modify for your use? Unfortunately, we aren't there yet, but the community is slowly growing and in time, we will get there.

There are many organizations, institutions, and foundations taking steps toward creating, collecting, and archiving OER for your use.

One of the organizations leading this effort to collect and organize OER is the OER Commons. Their library and search engine makes OER searchable by Subject and Grade Level. This is only one example of a website serving as an aggregator of OER. Go to the Leeward Library's OER LibGuide to find other OER repositories: http://guides.leeward.hawaii.edu/oer/additional-resources

Another website to refer to is Open Washington. The Washington State Board (SBCTC) developed this site as a complete OER platform for educators. For each resource on this site, there is a list of unique traits, licensing information, and an example of how to attribute the source. Let's explore Open Washington.

We will use the Open Washington site to familiarize ourselves with Open Textbooks, Course Materials, Videos, and Images. If you are teaching a highly-enrolled subject using a commercial textbook, you may be able to find an open textbook that meets your needs. This is the most straightforward way to adopt OER for your course.

Open Textbooks

An open textbook is a type of OER that is organized like a standard textbook. While this organizational scheme may not appear particularly innovative, most instructors have experience teaching with textbooks. Consequently, open textbooks have the potential to have a greater impact on formal education than other types of open educational resources.

Find an Open Textbooks>>

Open Course Materials

OER structured as entire courses are called Open Course Materials or OpenCourseWare. There are countless openly available course materials in a variety of disciplines if you know where to locate them. SBCTC (developer of Open Washington) has vetted the sites that provide some of the best quality open course materials, such as assessments, syllabi, readings, and lectures.

Find Open Course Materials>>

Open Video

There are numerous openly available videos in various disciplines.

Find Open Videos>>

Open Image

There is a plethora of openly available images in various disciplines.

Find Open Images>>

Image from "Introduction to Openness in Education" by David Wiley is licensed under CC BY 4.0

In summary, this Venn diagram demonstrates the relationship between Open Content, Open Course Materials (OCW), Open Educational Resources (OER), and Open Textbooks.

Important points to remember:

- When OERs used to support classroom teaching are aggregated and structured as a course, the aggregations are called Open Course Materials or OpenCourseWare.
- When OER are aggregated and structured like a textbook, we call these aggregations Open Textbooks.

Check Your Understanding

Find an Open Course Material in your subject area.
Find an Open Video in your subject area.
Find an Open Image in your subject area.

Be prepared to answer these questions:

How was your experience looking for OER in your subject area?
What is your impression of the process?
What were your impressions of the quality of the OER you found?

Optional: Participate in an Open Education Week 2018 activity this week.

4.1 Finding OER

Due before class on Tues. 3/6

Submit: Post your work to the Slack GoOpen #week-4 channel

Post hypertext links to the Open Course Material, Open Video, and Open Image you found in your subject area.
Post a response to the three questions above.

Grading Rubric

Points: 15

15 points for a posting all three open resources plus a complete answer to all three questions.
10 points for posting at least one open resource plus a complete answer to all three questions.
5 points for posting at least one open resource and a partial answer to the questions.
0 points for a blank or incomplete response.