Creating OER

• Commercially published textbooks may not fit with your curriculum, or they may have expensive, unsustainable digital access models that make them unaffordable for your institution.

• Students can access OER and open textbooks before they start their programme of study to help them to prepare for their studies, and they can also be used after graduation in professional practice or other contexts.

• Making your materials available as OER allows you to showcase your expertise and scholarship, and enhance your reputation.

• Creating open textbooks and OER supports open education, and UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Before you start, it would be advisable to find out if your institution has any policies about sharing educational materials openly. Your Library or Learning and Teaching Professional Support Service may be able to provide further information.

Creating an entire textbook is likely to need a considerable amount of time and resource and you may be able to save some time by adapting an existing openly licensed textbook. if you do decide to start from scratch, you'll find helpful advice in Authoring Open Textbooks by Melissa Falldin and Karen Lauritsen.

You can find more information about the differences between OA material and OER on our Introducing OER page.

OER can be created using commonly used digital platforms such as Google Sites, but there are also tools specifically designed for OER. A few examples are listed below.

Pressbooks

The Pressbooks Authoring and Editing Platform can be used to create and adapt OER. Pressbooks offers a range of subscription options for individual authors. Colleagues at the University of Sheffield can request to use the pilot Sheffield Pressbooks Network.

OER Commons Open Author

OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. It incorporates Open Author which is a freely available authoring tool that can be used to create and remix OER. It includes an Accessibility Checker to ensure that all resources created are accessible to people with disabilities.

MERLOT Content Builder

MERLOT provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers. The MERLOT Content Builder is a free website development tool that can be used to create content. All websites built with Content Builder are fully accessible, scalable to any screen size or device, and are hosted by MERLOT.

Regardless of where your OER are created or hosted, adding records to OER repositories such as MERLOT and OER Commons will ensure maximum visibility to other educators who may have an interest in using them. The following blog post includes further advice.

Open Stax. How to share your own openly licensed content

Acknowledgements/further reading:

Melissa Falldin and Karen Lauritsen. Authoring Open Textbooks

Abby Elder. The OER Starter Kit

When you are deciding where to host your OER it is important to bear in mind what metrics and usage data you will be able to collect from the host site. Data can be valuable in demonstrating the value of your OER and can contribute to evidence for your career development and grant applications.

Usage:

From your host site, can you obtain data such as the number of views, the number of downloads, the geographical location of the user, how long are they spending on your site? From a privacy point of view, it’s important to consider how much data you need, and to be sure not to over-collect data.

Impact:

Usage statistics alone are not sufficient and you may want to consider how you could assess the impact your work has had on others. One mechanism you could use is to add a short survey or feedback form to your OER. Here is one example of a form which you could modify for your own use. Another mechanism is simply to add a statement to your OER which encourages users to get in touch with you. Make your contact preferences prominent.

Further information:

The OER starter kit for program managers book from the Rebus Community has a helpful chapter on data collection.

The University of Leeds OER policy document on the creation, publishing and storage of OER.

The University of Sheffield's policy on the use and creation of OER is available on the governance page under Intellectual Propoerty. To discuss this further or for more information please contact oer@sheffield.ac.uk.

The University of York does not currently have a policy with regards to creating OER or how to store them. To discuss this further or for more information please contact lib-oer@york.ac.uk.