Defining OER
Open Educational Resources are teaching resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use, which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource.
The 5Rs
The open nature of OERs is often described as the "5Rs." The open licensing allows users to do the following with these materials:
- Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
- Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
- Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
- Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
- Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)
OER Search Engines
- OASISOpenly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 97 different sources and contains 385,629 records. OASIS is being developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
- Creative Commons Searchfind photos, music, text, books, educational material, and more that is free to share or build upon utilizing Creative Commons enabled search services at Google and Flickr.
- BCCampusThe B.C. Open Collection is a curated selection of open educational resources (OER) that can be accessed by educators in B.C. and beyond to use in the classroom, in an institutional learning management system, or on other teaching and learning platforms.
All materials are openly licensed. This means they are free to use, customize, and share.
OER Repositories
- MERLOT World Languages PortalThis takes you directly to the World Languages Portal. Scroll down to browse Materials by Discipline and filter on the left.
- Center for Open Educational Resources and Language LearningThe Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL) was inaugurated in 2010 as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI program (National Foreign Language Resource Centers). The overall mission of these federally-funded centers is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages by producing resources (materials and best practices) that can be profitably employed in a variety of settings. Today, COERLL is funded by the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
- Open Oregon Educational ResourcesFilter by Discipline to Languages.
OER Evaluation
Here are a few rubrics and questions you might use in the evaluation process. If these processes seems lengthy, think about the process you follow to review textbooks and other materials for your course. You can use a similar or modified evaluation process.
- Does this OER cover the content you'd like your students to learn in this course or module?
- How accessible is this content? Will it be accessible for your students, or is it too technical? Or is it robust and challenging enough for your students?
- How can you use the content? Verify the license that the resource is under. Can you remix or revise the OER as long as it isn't for commercial purposes?
- What would you like to do with it? Does only a portion of it apply to your class? Would you possibly want to combine this OER with another OER or resource? Does the library have access to articles that could act as supplemental readings?
- As you collect more OER and other resources, save them in a central location. Take note of how you envision using them. Align these resources with the learning objectives and weekly lessons on your syllabus in order to identify gaps.
- Evaluation ChecklistFaculty Checklist for Evaluating Course Materials developed by Open Oregon Educational Resources.
- Open Textbooks Review CriteriaShort review criteria by the Open Textbook Library.
- Accessibility ChecklistA checklist for accessibility including topics such as images, links, font and more.
- Achieve's OER rubricAchieve.org has developed eight OER rubrics as well as an evaluation tool to help users determine the degree of alignment of OER to the Common Core State Standards, and aspects of quality of OER.
- iRubric: Evaluating OER rubricQuestions to ask about the OER you are thinking of using. This rubric is developed by Sarah Morehouse with help from Mark McBride, Kathleen Stone, and Beth Burns is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
- Achieve OER Evaluation Tool HandbookThis handbook will guide a user through the process of evaluating an online resources using Achieve OER Evaluation Tool, which is hosted on OERCommons.org.
Creative Commons
You'll know that materials are OERs if they use Creative Commons licenses, which work alongside copyright to allow individuals to share works. There are several types of licenses, and the Creative Commons website provides additional clarification. The graphic below offers a visual explanation of the licenses:
