When considering an OER for a course, there a few things to consider. Just like selecting a textbook, you should evaluate the OER to make sure it is meeting the needs of the course, yourself, your students, and our institution. Achieve, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization, has established rubrics for evaluating OER, and these rubrics are used in the OER Commons website to evaluate OER. They have identified eight areas to consider:
Degree of Alignment to Standards, Quality of Explanation of the Subject Matter, Utility of Materials Designed to Support Teaching, Quality of Assessment, Quality of Technological Interactivity, Quality of Instructional and Practice Exercises, Opportunities for Deeper Learning, Assurance of Accessibility
Below are links to rubrics aligned to and adapted from the Achieve rubrics that you can use that will help you evaluate OER (courtesy of Pasadena City College):
Many OERs found online are free for others to use and even adapt. However, before implementing another person's or organzation's OER for your class, be aware of any usage restrictions or necessary permissions. For example, many OERs tend to be published with Creative Commons licenses that detail exactly how the work can be shared or reused. When in doubt about usage rights, contact the OER creator or rights holder(s) directly.
One of the big components of utilizing OER is attribution. Attribution is very much like citing references -- it is providing credit to the creator of the OER that you are using. In order to provide correct attribution, you may have to list Creative Commons information, as well as the creator's information. In fact, you will find some examples of giving attribution throughout this Libguide. When adopting and adapting existing OER for your own course, please be sure to attribute your OER source!
Resources:
Attribution Tool: Just like a citation generator, this tool from Open Washington helps you format attributions for any OER you utilize (Open Attribution Builder is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Managed by WA SBCTC).
Creative Commons: On this page, you'll find out how to provide corrective attributions when utilizing resources through Creative Commons. Learn more by visiting the Creative Commons page on this guide using the menu tabs. (left).