Open education and open educational resources: Adopt and Evaluate OER

Find the right material

• Search the OER collections for your subject areas to find the materials.  We have created lists of content for you on this guide.

Review and Select

• Evaluate your chosen OER materials in terms of accessibility, accuracy, inclusion and diversity, relevance to your course, production quality, interactivity, technical issues and clear Creative Commons.
• After you found an OER, use evaluation methods and rubrics to assess the quality e.g.
  • You can find more tips in this video tutorial.
  • Open Textbook Library: Open Textbooks Review Criteria
  • Accesible teaching (Teaching and Learning Centre, TUNI)

Check the copyright licensing to see how you can use it: e.g. CC-BY-NC-SA. You can find more information on copyright licensing on the copyright page in this guide.

Decide if you want to modify

• If an open material meets most of your criteria, consider whether you could make some modifications to improve its quality and usefulness (for example, through editing, revising or replacing content)
•  please note that you’ll need to weigh up the scope of any changes against the work involved in producing a new material

Distribute to your students

• let your students know it´s available and how to find it
• think about how students will access the material

More tips:

• You can find further advice on how to customize an open textbook in this guide by Lauri M. Aesoph, available from BC Campus Open Education: Adaptation Guide
• Five Steps to OER Adoption from the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources:

• Content quality
  • is the content current
  • does the resource reflect accurate and recent scholarship in terms of the subject matter
  • is the content clear, readable, understandable
  • what is the perspective of the resource, what is the intended purpose of the resource
  • who is the author
  • is the resource peer or editor reviewed
  • is the reviewer of the resource qualified
  • is the review available
  • what is the reputation of the platform where the resource is available
  • is the students / teachers review available
• Appropriateness/ Alignment/ Relevance
  • Does the resource align with a learning outcome or course objective?
  • Is the resource appropriate or at the domain level for your students?
  • Is it possible to combine this resource with another resource to meet your needs?
• Technical quality
  • Is the design easy to navigate
  • Does the resource include clear visuals of a high technical qualit
  • What is the availability of the resource e.eg. language, how long it is available, formats (pde, ePub etc.), in what model is the resource available (e.g. mobile), does using the resource require a special software, the quality of the sound/visual
  • Does the hosting organization conduct quality control
• What are the terms of the resource´s copyright license?
  • Is the resource in the public or commercial domain?
  • What are the limitations? Terms and Conditions?
  • Does the resource have a clear licensing declaration or open license?
  • If it has an open license, (e.g. Creative Commons, etc.) does it allow for customization or refinement? (Remix, Share Again, Revise)
• Accessibility e.g.
  • Is the content understandable?
  • Is the structure of the content easy to navigate and easy to read?
  • Are text alternatives provided for any non-text content?
  • Do any embedded audio or video Include captions, subtitles and/or transcripts?