How to Contribute

"Working Together Teamwork Puzzle Concept" by lumaxart is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

In addition to advocating for OER, there is a myriad of exciting opportunities for teachers and students to create, develop, and share content in order to help others access high quality education. If you are interested in answering this call to action by contributing to the OER movement in such a way, please see the information below to get started.

Note: This page is intended for those who have experience using OER. If you are more of a beginner, please visit our Finding OER page.

Where to Begin

Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/) is an excellent starting point when it comes to creating and sharing OER. This site's portal allows you to search a variety of open content on numerous popular sites to build OER (Creative Commons, n.d.a). Creative Commons also provides helpful information as to how to give attribution (Creative Commons, n.d.c). Moreover, notably, the site enables you to acquire free Creative Commons licenses, which allow others in the public sector to use and share your OER--provided they give you proper credit for your work--while allowing you to retain copyright and set conditions of use. Fortunately, you can choose Creative Commons licenses with ease, as they are available in a readable format that sums up some of the most essential terms and conditions in understandable language, and you can use the License Chooser (Creative Commons, n.d.d). This will select a license for you once you have simply answered a couple of questions regarding derivative works and commercial use (Creative Commons, n.d.b). Creative Commons also partners with numerous platforms through which you can share your work (Creative Commons, n.d.e).

Where to Contribute

After you have built, attributed, and licensed your work, it will be ready to share. Below is a list of fantastic educational repositories where you can share your content.

Curriki

Curriki (curriki.org) is a database to which educators from around the world have contributed. Once you have become a member of this free global community, you will be able to create or upload your resources (Curriki, n.d.a). Simply, you will need to: title your resource; enter its contents into an editor; note keywords; and select the subject, subject area, educational level, standards, material type, and access settings (Curriki, n.d.b).

For more information on Curriki, please visit the Finding OER page.

IOER

IOER (ioer.ilsharedlearning.org/) stands for Illinois Open Educational Resources and is brought to you by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the Illinois State Board of Education. This repository includes online libraries of curated sources and learning lists of educational materials, such as lessons. After you complete the free registration, you will be able to create your own learning lists, open your own online resource library, and create or upload resources (IOER, 2017a). To contribute a resource, you can either upload a file or enter a URL, and you will be required to provide a title, a description, and keywords. Optionally, you may also enter creator information, publisher information, and technical/equipment requirements; you also have the ability to make selections regarding usage rights, education levels, resource type, media type, subject, learning standards, access rights, language, educational use, end user, group type, assessment type, accessibility control, accessibility feature, accessibility hazard, and IOER access limitations. Helpfully, you can also choose to add the resource to one or more of your collections (IOER, 2017b).

LORO

LORO (http://loro.open.ac.uk/) stands for Languages Open Resources Online. It is a collection that specifically focuses on the support of language learning and teaching. Some of the resources have been especially created to support Open University Language courses and are included in the repository as OER (LORO, 2010a). After signing up for LORO, which is free, you can visit the Resource Manager to create a resource and upload your own material quickly and easily; in addition to checking the rights declaration, you need only complete the upload form, select the resource, and enter resource details. You can thus provide information pertaining to your resource, such as its title, language, level, description, creator, and license. You may also enter tags or keywords and select viewing permissions options (LORO, 2010b).

MERLOT II

MERLOT II (merlot.org) is a curated collection of OER. You can contribute to collections by building materials with Content Builder, creating Course ePortfolios, and submitting materials (MERLOT, 2017a). After acquiring free membership, it is easy to submit material; you need only enter details regarding the resource. The URL, title, discipline, description, material type, primary audience, and language are required information, and you also have the option of adding other details, such as keywords, images, your author information, technical format, and technical requirements (MERLOT, 2017b).

For more information on Merlot II, please visit the Finding OER page.

Orange Grove

The Orange Grove (floridashines.org/orange-grove) is Florida's repository for educational resources that is provided by FloridaShines and hosts open and institution collections, as well as K-12 and higher education resources (FloridaShines, 2015). After requesting a contributor account, you can choose your collection to share and complete the contribution wizard; individual materials can be shared through email notifications, web links, and Learning Management Systems that may be integrated with the repository. You can also simply suggest resources to be included on the site (The Orange Grove, 2016).

Share My Lesson

Share My Lesson (sharemylesson.com) is a site that has been built by educators (Share My Lesson, n.d.a). After the first easy step of creating a free account, uploading a lesson is simple. Contributors: give their lessons titles and accompanying descriptions; choose their files to upload; provide links for any websites and videos; upload images; and select the appropriate grade levels, subjects, topics, Creative Commons licenses, resource types, any relevant events, and states. Contributors can even choose to mark the content as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or "good for parents" (Share My Lesson, n.d.b).

For more information on Share My Lesson, please visit the Finding OER page.

You may also contribute open content, such as OER lesson plans, to the spreadsheet below by entering resource URLs and details.

OER Contributions

Google Sites

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