Getting Started Creating your Own OER

Can't find an OER you think fits your course? Or just looking to create a new resource for others? It is possible to make your own OER. There are plenty of resources that help make the process simple and easy to create new OER or to adapt others' OER to your course. Let these links help you get a start on creating or remixing an OER for your course.

• Affordable Learning Georgia Tutorial: Creating and Modifying Open Educational Resources
• 80 Open Education Resource (OER) Tools for Publishing and Development Initiatives
• BC Open Textbook Adaption Guide
• BC Open Textbook Self-Publishing Guide
• Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know
• Open Textbook Adoption Worksheet
• The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far)
• Six Steps of Modifying an Open Textbook

Open Journals at Appalachian

Appalachian State University's Belk Library supports open access publishing, open archives, and open repositories in order to advance the creation and dissemination of scholarly research produced by faculty, staff, and research fellows. There are two locally-hosted open access publishing platforms, PubPub and Open Journal Systems (OJS), which allow members of the academic community to publish open access journals. Our goal is strengthen the research profile of Appalachian State University and our faculty members through the production and publication of high-quality, peer-reviewed journals in a range of scholarly fields and industries. You can find more information about open journals at Appalachian here. 

Government publications and Open Journals can be extremely helpful in gathering information, or if you want to possibly publish your own findings.

Everything published by the Federal government is free of any copyright restrictions. A great place to search is USA.gov. For a specific agency's website checkout the A-Z List of Federal Agencies. Many of these materials are not retrieved with simple Google searches. Some examples of U.S. Federal Databases are the Homeland Security Digital Library (a collection of documents related to homeland security policy, strategy, and organizational management) and SciTech Connect (a collection of science, technology, and engineering research information from the U.S. Department of Energy).

The Directory of Open Access Journals is "the most comprehensive searchable index of free scientific and scholarly content in full-text formats," according to Choice Reviews. Other open access collections include, Digital Commons Network, Public Library of Science (PLOS), PubMed Central, SpringerOpen, Open Journal Systems, PubPub, and BioMed Central.

© 2014 dandy. Licensed under CC BY.

• How to use YouTube video editor - YouTube's editor can be helpful in customizing OER videos for your class.
• TedEd - Create a lesson by adding questions, discussion topics, and other supplementary materials to Ted Talks or any educational video on YouTube.

Graphic by Megan Pritcher

You probably have already created potential OER and just haven't thought about them as resources you might be able to share! OER take the shape of different resources, including (but not limited to):

• Syllabi and courses created (for example, if you created a class on WWI Literature, it might be useful for others to see your assigned readings and activities)
• Videos/tutorials on a specific topic
• Worksheets
• Group activities
• Writing Prompts
• Test, quizzes, and other assessments
• Lesson Plans
• Research assignments and activities

If you'd like to share one of your learning objects as an OER, think about the following:

1. Decide where they might go (general or disciplinary repository)
2. Find out what the requirements are for them to go there. Do they need to be in a specific format? What metadata is required?
3. Rank/evaluate your OER. What level is it intended for? What's the language use (very technical or introductory)? Can you add instructions/tips on how to use it/
4. Craft metadata for the object. What terms can you use to make your OER more discoverable?
5. Licensing! Look at the Creative Commons website to decide what's right for you. What are your intentions for the object?
6. If you are remixing several OER which were published under different licenses, use the Creative Commons License Compatibility Chart to help you determine whether there will be compatibility issues.
7. Refer to CC attribution guide and write appropriate citations for resources you used. The suggested citation format is: [Title] by [Author], used under [CC BY LICENSE]

Here are a few resources to help jumpstart creating your own OER content:

• Pressbooks
• OER Commons: OpenAuthor
• Mathbook XML
• WikiBooks
• Merlot Content Builder

• H2O from Harvard Law - create custom playlists of course readings and other material
• LibGuides - LibGuides (like this one) can be used to compile content for your course. This link goes to a custom libguide created for PSY 250 at Northwestern Michigan College.
• OER Commons Module Builder - The Module Builder allows authors to create both student and instructor facing content views. Authors are encouraged to include overviews, pedagogical supporting text, and instructions.
• 20 Million Minds Mix - Allows faculty to create high grade custom textbooks in both digital and print formats
• OERca - Open source software from the University of Michigan designed to help instructors compile & create course materials
• Open Textbook Library - Open Textbook Network allows for modifying of their open textbooks using the Pressbooks platform.
• Lumen Learning - Institutional subscription required for access to authoring platform and hosting of OER content
• Open Attribution Builder - a citation tool for open content

Below are resources that help with accessibility standards for OER.

BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit

National Center on Accessible Educational Materials

floe Inclusive Learning Design Handbook

Open Education Consortium - Addressing Accessibility Issues