In this module we shared a broad overview of open educational resources. We explored some of the reasons for the rapid growth of open educational resources and examined different workflows for adopting, adapting, creating and sharing OER.
Key Takeaways
- The development of open educational resources has been informed by events, movements and organizations. Events and organizations included the United Nations Charter of Human Rights, the Free software movement, and the open web.
- Students are increasingly advocating for faculty and administration to select open educational resources as a way to make education more affordable and accessible.
- While there are different perspectives on what makes a resource open, according to David Wiley open educational resource should allow others to engage in the 5Rs: reuse, revise, remix, reuse, and retain.
- In addition to the 5Rs we can also look at OER according to how people will use them. The spectrum of Adaption, Adaption, Creation and Connection allows us to consider what we want to do with OER and how much time and effort might be involved.
- Using OER can help save the cost of education for students, help prior to learning and after learning, and can provide peace of mind for all users.
- When finding and adopting OER use the Checklist for Including Third Party OER to help successfully integrate it into your course.
- OER can be adapted for a variety of reasons including diversity, accessibility and inclusive design, translation, updating, learning design.
- Creative Commons licenses outline requirements related to attribution, identification of modifications, assigning licenses to adapted works, and sharing back with the community. This will impact your adaption as you may need to include aspects of your work that you may not have considered.
- While how you develop OER will depend on the medium you are creating, the Workflow for Creating OER can guide you through the process.
- When sharing OER it is important to improve discoverability with metadata, and select an appropriate OER repository.