Adopting existing OER and using as-is in your classroom has the lowest time commitment. But if you’re unable to find OER that suit your teaching needs then you may decide to:
Learn about considerations when deciding whether to adopt, adapt or create an OER.
Play video: Adopt, Adapt, Create [2:17 mins]
Sometimes you will find OER that might need to be adapted to fit specific needs and requirements for your classroom. Adapting OER means making changes to already existing open content.
Do you have teaching materials created for your classroom you want to share with other educators? Or are you considering writing an open class text from scratch?
Whether it's a textbook, lesson plan, H5P activity, assignment, or other types of coursework materials, the following video offers a handful of important tips for new creators of OER.
Play video: Creating Open Educational Resources: Tips for New Creators [5:17 mins]
Best practices and guidance for making your OER content open, available, findable, and (re)usable by other educators.
To ensure that your OER can be sustainably used into the future it needs to be:
Select and apply an open licence to your OER. The most commonly used licences for the publication of OER is the Creative Commons licence suite.
Consider the tools, editability, source, and expertise required to create, adapt and maintain your OER. Poor technical choices can make open content less open and harder to work with.
ACCESS TO EDITING TOOLSCan you edit the OER without the need for specialised or expensive tools? (e.g. proprietary software, discontinued platforms) |
LEVEL OF EXPERTISEWill colleagues be able to edit the OER at their current skill level? (i.e. does someone need training in a particular software to work with the content?) |
MEANINGFULLY EDITEDCan all parts of the OER be edited? (e.g. a scanned image of a handwritten document contained in a pdf is essentially not editable) |
SELF-SOURCEDCan you edit the OER directly or is a separate editable file needed? |
When it's time to share your OER project you will need somewhere to host it. This allows other educators to find and build on your materials.
Check to see if your open educational materials can be hosted on our own platform for UTAS staff outputs. Contact oa.repository@utas.edu.au for more information and guidance.
UTAS Library offers our teaching staff an open textbook publishing program that includes hosting your content in the Collective's online library.
Allows you to build and self-publish OER teaching materials such as courses, units, lessons, activities and presentations on your own.
A platform for creating and hosting a "book" format. It can output your content as a website or as an ebook (PDF, EPUB or MOBI). View an example of a GitBook.
Set up a free Google account and create publicly shareable URL links to teaching materials (lesson plans, activities, instructional materials, etc.) you upload or create, and store, on the Drive platform. Learn more about sharing a file publicly on Google Drive.
Increase the discoverability of your OER and submit the URL link to your hosted resource to one or more Open Educational Resources repositories.
Register for a free account on MERLOT and submit the URL link for your hosted OER.
Register for a free account on OER Commons and submit the URL link for your hosted OER. Your resource is sent to the OER Commons Librarians to be reviewed and approved before it is added to the site.
Check your textbook addresses the Open Textbook Library's inclusion criteria and submit the URL link for your hosted book.
Accessibility Toolkit by Amanda Coolidge, Sue Doner, Tara Robertson, and Josie Gray
CAUL Open Educational Resources PD Program: Foundations by Council of Australian University Librarians
Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility in Open Educational Resources by Nikki Andersen
OER Capability Toolkit by RMIT University
The OER Starter Kit by Abbey Elder
The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) by Apurva Ashok, Zoe Wake Hyde, and Kaitlin Schilling
