Open Educational Resources (OER): Getting Started
This guide provides information and resources for faculty who are interested in exploring opportunities for using textbooks and learning materials published through non-commercial sources in their (physical or virtual) classrooms.
Library Resources: Another Source for Learning Materials
Library materials are not OER, and they are not free to the institution, but they are free of cost to students and instructors! Links can be embedded in your Blackboard course. Our e-book collections include a selection of textbooks in various disciplines, as well as selected classics and contemporary award-winning texts in humanities fields. Making up a customized packet of readings? Don't forget the full-text material in our databases. Need help with library materials? Just ask!
Thinking about OER in Your Classroom
- Make a commitment to exploring OER options for a course you teach.
- Become familiar with the basic vocabulary of OER.
- Understand the different types of OER licenses.
- Decide what type(s) of material you want to use in your first iteration of the course.
- A stand-alone textbook?
- A selection of readings?
- Supplemental material?
- Decide how you plan to use the material.
- Are you looking for a textbook to adopt?
- Do you want to get started customizing material?
- Determine criteria for deciding whether or not a resource is suitable for your class.
- Search for potential classroom resources. Librarians can help.
- Evaluate what you have found, and make final selections.
- Prepare your materials and upload or link them in your Blackboard course.
You don't need to create a whole course all at once! For a gradual start, add just a few OER materials to your course over the term.
- OER Mythbusting
From SPARC, this pamphlet attempts to diminish misconceptions about OER materials. - Map to SuccessA guide to getting started, from Western Michigan College.
- OER Starter Kit Workbook
A guide to getting started using OER in the classroom, with worksheets. - Introduction to Open Educational ResourcesThis course serves as an introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) providing faculty with new options for selecting textbooks and other resources so they can make the best decisions for their students.
- Introduction to Open Educational Resources
From Openstax, this guide to OER materials includes modules on development, using primary sources in the classroom, and on delivery, storage, and organization of OER resources for teaching. - OER Community Course Experience
These SUNY OER Community Courses will introduce you to the fundamental principles and effective practices related to Open Educational Resources. Throughout this learning space, you will have the opportunity to explore and discuss methods and approaches to finding, adopting, customizing, integrating, creating, publishing, and licensing OER. - Adopting Open Educational Resources in the ClassroomThis course from Lumen Learning provides faculty with an introduction to the laws that influence the use, re-use, and distribution of content they may want to use in a course. Activities include finding openly licensed content for use in a class and publishing openly licensed works created by faculty. At the end of the course, students will have openly licensed content that will be ready for use in a course.
- Making the Transition to Open: The Easy Way to Create, License, and Share Free Materials (K-12/HE)
The Open Educational Resource movement is still very young and new to faculty. This course encourages faculty to participate in developing and improving OER by demonstrating some simple steps by which materials can be generated or collected, licensed, and shared. It only makes sense that fostering collaboration on and improvement of resources with educational best practices in mind will, ultimately, translate into a more diverse, higher-quality case of materials that educators worldwide can use and continue to make better
For Real: Adding OER Content to Blackboard
- Downloading OEr and Uploading tri Blackboard
Step-by-step instructions for uploading textbooks and other OER documents to Blackboard.
Stay in the Loop
- Subscribe to the OER DigestThe OER Digest is your bi-weekly newsletter for open education updates, opportunities, and reminders. Subscribe to get it delivered to your inbox every other Thursday.
OER Terms
- OER Starter Kit Glossary From Iowa State University. Good words for a broader understanding of OER practices.
- Open Education Handbook/Glossary A broader perspective on Open Education vocabulary.
Backward Design: Getting from Here to There
A frequently suggested framework for implementing OER in a course is the idea of backward design. Simplified to the extreme, the process of backward design asks you to:
- Determine what you want your students to achieve through the course (learning objectives)?
- Determine how you will know how well they accomplish this (assessment).
- Determine what materials and activities will support this learning.
- Determine how should they be organized and presented or shared.
Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Ed by Call Number: Ebsco eBook Academic CollectionISBN: 9781416600350Publication Date: 2005-01-01Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks.
Credits
This guide was developed by Leslie Murtha, Robert Mast, Amanda Carey, Janet Hauge, and Mike Sargente, Atlantic Cape Community College Libraries.
Published June 2020.