One of the greatest benefits of OER for faculty and instructors is the ability to change materials created by other experts to better fit individual teaching style and learning objectives and to better reflect your students and their interests. OER allow you to customize material to precisely meet your needs.
In this section, you will learn how to adapt open educational resources so that they better fit your needs. Adapting is often referred to as “remixing” in the OER community. At the end of this section, you should be able to adapt and localize existing OER to meet your specific teaching goals and to better reflect your community and students.
CLO 5 Adapt existing OER to better suit my needs
MLO 5.1. Adapt existing OER to the course
MLO 5.2 Adapt course design to integrate OER effectively
Created by BC Campus, the Adaptation Guide is a practical reference about how to customize — or adapt — an open textbook so that it better fits your needs in the classroom. This guide defines the term adaptation and discusses reasons for revising a book, why this is possible with an open textbook, and the challenges involved.
Localization refers to taking educational resources developed for one context and adapting them to other contexts. These contexts can, for example, be geographical, pedagogical, political, or technical. The practice of localization encompasses more than translating materials into a local language or swapping a photo to reflect a culture. Localization is at the heart of the OER process—it exemplifies diversity, openness, and reusability.
This module from open textbook publisher Openstax offers an overview of localization. Here are a few reasons to localize material:
Address a particular teaching style or learning style
Include examples that will resonate with your community or campus
Adjust for a different course level
Address diversity needs
Make the material more accessible for people with disabilities
We’ve looked at adaptation and localization. However, it is a good idea to take a step back. When designing a course, looking for OER should be the last step you consider after you’ve created your learning/course objectives. This will determine how you adapt and localize an open textbook or other open material. Here are five things to consider when building your course:
What do you want your students to learn? What are the goals or desired outcomes?
What is the purpose of each lesson, and how does it fit into the course as a whole?
What assessments or tasks will students perform to demonstrate understanding?
How will you teach? Plan learning activities and instruction.
Lastly, consider what materials and resources will support objectives.
For more information on Backward design see: Bowen, Ryan S., (2017). Understanding by Design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching.
Hughes, V. (2018, May 08). Front-loading student success with OER and course design. openstax. https://openstax.org/blog/front-loading-student-success-oer-and-course-design
“Customizing OER Materials and Integrating into your LMS/CMS” - OER Fridays! Webinar with Dave Dillon, Counseling Faculty and Professor, Grossmont College and Enoch Park, Quality Matters/Online Learning Specialist, UNC Charlotte
“Using OER to build more inclusive materials” - OER Fridays! Webinar with Jasmine Roberts, Lecturer, Ohio State and Stephen Krueger, Scholarly Publishing Librarian, Dartmouth College
Open-enabled Pedagogy: New Ways of Teaching that Leverage Open Licenses - OER Fridays! Webinar with Heather Miceli, Faculty, Roger Williams University and Alexis Clifton, Senior Instructional Support Specialist, SUNY Geneseo.
Adaptation Guide by BCcampus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
What is Localization? by ISKME is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
OER Fridays OER Webinar Series is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License except where otherwise noted.
Introducing the OER Workshop Series by Jeanne Hoover, Sarah Falls, Will Cross, and Jeff McAdams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License except where otherwise noted.
Using OER To Build More Inclusive Materials by Jasmine Roberts and Stephen Krueger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License except where otherwise noted.
Understanding by Design. By Ryan Bowen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
References
Hughes, V. (2018, May 08). Front-loading student success with OER and course design. openstax. https://openstax.org/blog/front-loading-student-success-oer-and-course-design