Open Educational Resources (OER)

Introduction

Open educational resources (OER) are materials available at little or often no cost and can be used for teaching, learning, or research. These resources may include: textbooks, readings, videos, simulations, games, and course content such as quizzes/exams, assignments, and assessment tools (EDUCAUSE, 2010). OER materials are often digital and available to faculty under a Creative Commons or similar usage license. OERs are part of the Open Solutions movement that seeks to ensure that information is freely and fairly available for everyone (UNESCO, 2022).

OER offer an alternative to expensive course materials for students and provide instructors materials that they can tailor to their own needs.

This library resource guide is intended to be resource for faculty members interested in learning more about OER and to help them find materials that might be used in their courses.

The 5 Rs of Open Education Resources

OER materials are released under an open license granting permission for everyone to do the 5Rs (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute).

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)


 

Why Choose OER?

OERs are part of the Open Solutions movement that seeks to ensure that information is freely and fairly available for everyone (UNESCO, 2022). Adopting OER has benefits for both faculty and students:

Benefits for Faculty: 

Increases student retention and improves student performance by reducing costs
Promotes academic freedom to modify or add content to your course
Provides more and more engaging resources for your students

Benefits for Students:

Materials are free to access and can be purchased in print at a low cost
Materials are free to access, before AND after your course
OER are free self-study and review materials for brushing up on material
Resources are customizable and can be aligned with only what you need to know - no more skipping around chapters you don't read!

OER Adoption Impact Calculator

The OER Adoption Impact Calculator helps you understand many of the potential impacts of adopting OER instead of traditionally copyrighted learning materials. 

 

Where to Start

The OER Starter Kit

Learn more about OER with the OER Starter Kit (Elder and Katz, 2020)! This publication has been created to provide instructors with the basics ideas behind the use and creation of open education resources (OER). 

Modifying an Open Textbook: What you Need to Know

This is a five-step guide for faculty who want to modify an open textbook. Step-by-step instructions for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types are included.

OER Options

One of the benefits of using OER is that you have options: you can choose to adopt materials as-is, adapt materials to better meet your needs, or create new materials to share openly with other instructors. 

Adopt

If there are high-quality, peer-reviewed Open Educational Resources available on your course topic, and you do not feel the need to edit or otherwise alter them for use in your course, you might consider adopting them for use "as is." Adopting is the simplest way or including OER in your course, and the least time-intensive. This is most similar to a traditional textbook adoption.

Adapt

If there are OER available on the topic your course covers, but they are out-of-date or are too broad, you may want to consider adapting the materials. After checking that the Creative Commons license attached to the materials allows for adaptation, you may choose to edit the materials to tailor them to your course.

If there are existing OER available on the topic your course covers, but no single resource that covers all the needs of your course, you may want to consider building an "OER course pack," a selection of various OER, free online materials, and websites which make up the resources for use in a course. Like traditional course packs, these sets of materials can be extremely versatile and adaptable for different uses.

Create

If there are no high-quality OER available on your topic or if you have course materials that you believe are superior to the OER available to you online, you may want to consider creating or licensing your own OER course materials. This can be as simple as openly licensing and sharing a syllabus you currently use or sharing lesson plans on OER repositories like OER Commons. Other OER creation processes, such as publishing open textbooks, can be more complex. 

Open Textbook Collections

Open textbooks are free, online learning materials with Creative Commons licenses. Many of the collections will have links to the same books, but each will have a particular focus, and items you can't find in other collections.

Open Michigan

As a partnership of the University Library and Health Information Technology and Services, it is the home for all things open at the University of Michigan—including expertise and services for open educational resources, open data, and open publications.

OpenStax

OpenStax is a nonprofit educational initiative based at Rice University that publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print.

Open Textbook Library

Collection of openly-licensed textbooks that been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. The Open Textbook Library is supported by the University of Minnesota Center for Open Education and the Open Education Network.

LibreTexts

A non-commercial open textbook organization initiated at the University of California, Davis. Their collection is used across the nation as primary course textbooks and as supplemental learning resources.

Milne Open Textbooks

An open-access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. They publish high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.

B.C. Open Textbook

Collection of open textbooks for a variety of subjects and specialties from the B.C. Campus OpenEd. The open textbooks have been reviewed by faculty, meet accessibility requirements, and/or include ancillary materials (quizzes, test banks, slides, videos, etc.).

OER Repositories

OER repositories contain more than just open textbooks. Learning materials in these collections include full courses, syllabi, images, presentations, videos, simulations, and many more.

OER Commons

A digital public library and collaboration platform launched by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME). OER Commons allows searching by material types, educational or grade levels, and subject disciplines.

MERLOT

The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.

OASIS

Openly 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 115 different sources and contains 440,380 records.

OAPEN

The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of open access books.

Open Course Library

A collection of expertly developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – for 81 high-enrollment college courses. This collection was developed by the Washington State Colleges.

Resources to Help You Evaluate OER

Because OER may vary in quality, it is important for instructors to carefully evaluate them before adopting or adapting them. In general, you want to consider the following when evaluating or reviewing an OER.

  1. Does this OER cover the content you'd like to present to your students in this course? How does it align with your learning objectives?
  2. Is the material included in the OER accurate and up-to-date? Is the content appropriate for your students?
  3. Is this content licensed in an open way that allows for sharing and remixing?
  4. Is the format and content accessible for students? 

There are many different approaches to evaluating OER. Below are a variety of checklists and rubrics to help guide your evaluation process:

NMU OER Checklist (adapted from BCCampus)

Affordable Learning Georgia's OER Evaluation Criteria

OER Review Standards and Approval Rubric: U.S. Edition
The document is useful for what to consider if you are creating your own rubric.

Course Material Evaluation Worksheet

iRubric: Evaluating OER Rubric

How to Find and Evaluate OER (Video)

Finding Images for OER

Openly licensed images are helpful when created OER course materials, including textbooks and presentations. Below are a number of sites that feature images in the public domain or that are openly licensed. Remember to attribute the creator properly if you incorporate them into your OER. You can find more information about how to attribute items that have a Creative Commons license here

General Sites

Openverse

Flickr Creative Commons
Use license dropdown menu in search results to limit your search to images with Creative Commons licenses.

Wikimedia Commons
Media file repository of public domain and freely-licensed educational media content.

Unsplash
All of the pages you will find in this repository can be reused, modified, and shared for free; more information about the Unsplash license.

Google Images
Using the Tools function, you can sort by license type. 

Diverse Photographs and Images

Nappy
Free high-resolution photos of black and brown people, licensed Creative Commons Zero (CC0). 

PICNOI
Free photos of people of color; no attribution required, but can give credit by linking to site

#WOCinTech Chat
Free photos of women and non-binary people of color working in the Tech field; licensed CC BY  

Redefining Women Icon Collection
Icons of women; License: Creative Commons Public Domain CC0 1.0

The Gender Spectrum Collection
Free stock photos of trans and non-binary people, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0  

Disabled And Here
This collection is a disability-led effort to provide free and inclusive stock photos shot from our own perspective, featuring disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) across the Pacific Northwest. CC-BY 4.0

Disability:IN
Disability inclusive stock photography licensed CC-BY-ND.

Images of Empowerment 
A free library of images celebrating women’s lives and their work in 11 countries around the world. CC-BY-NC 4.0

Images of Empowerment by William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, David, and Lucile Packard Foundation & Getty Images
A library of powerful, positive and high-quality images showing women’s work and family life around the world. All photographs are available—free of charge—to non-commercial users (CC-BY-NC 4.0).

Iwaria
Stock photos from Africa, images available under a CC0 1.0 license.

Wikimedia Commons LGBT Category
Collection of open images organized under various LGBT categories, with the images available under different CC licenses.

Library and Museum Image Collections

British Library Flickr Collection
One million+ images from 17th, 18th, and 19th century books held by the British Library.

Metropolitan Museum of Art OASC
Some of the Met's art images have been designated as "Open Access for Scholarly Content" or OASC. These images, identified by a small OASC icon under the image on the item page, are available for use in any scholarly or educational project. Unfortunately, there is not a way to limit collection searches to only OASC images, so it is important to check each item page.

National Gallery of Art
Images of works of art in Gallery's permanent collection which they believe to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial.

New York Public Library Digital Collections
Images and other digital materials from the NYPL collection. Not all images are open-source. Be sure to investigate the permissions for any image you are interested in reusing!

Library of Congress Photos, Prints and Drawings
The Library of Congress has digitized more than 1 million photos and prints. Not all images are open access, but item result pages include a "Rights Advisory" with relevant details.

Smithsonian Open Access
You can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images

Europeana Collections
Search more than 53 million records from cultural institutions across Europe. Limit search results by type (including images) and by rights/license. You can also browse the collection by topic, institutional source, or color!

Science & Medicine Images

USGS Photos

NASA Image Portal
Images of both space and space exploration, including from the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.

National Park Service Multimedia Search
Images from more than 400 locations managed by the National Park Service.

NOAA Photo Library

Science and Environment Collections
A collection of government sources for science-based images, including the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Agricultural Library.

NIH Images from the History of Medicine

CDC Public Health Image Library

 

 

 

 

What are Creative Commons Licenses?

Creative Commons (CC) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2001 with support from the Center for the Public Domain. Its goal is to help people take full advantage of the internet's capability for aiding in the dissemination of information, which they have done largely through the provision of open licenses.

In December 2002, the first of these licenses were released, which began providing authors with legal backbone for openly sharing their works. Today, Creative Commons licenses have become perhaps the most widely used open licenses for Open Educational Resources (OER). Under the terms of the licenses, the copyright holders still retain their copyrights. However, with these free tools they are able to grant usage rights to the public. The licenses offer creators an array of choices with regards to the permissions they will grant to others.

Simultaneously, these licenses provide users with legal permission to use the resources, without fear of copyright infringement so long as they abide by the terms set forth. The terms are dictated in easy-to-understand terms, removing much of the ambiguity that can typically accompany such legal notices.

 

Choosing and Attributing Licenses

Things to Consider Before Licensing Your Work

Outlines things to think about before applying Creative Commons license to your work, or using Creative Commons-licensed materials.

Choosing a License

Learn how to choose the appropriate license for your work.

Marking Your Work with CC License

Learn how to mark your work with a Creative Commons license.

Best Practices for Attribution

Provides some good (and not so good) examples of attribution.

Open Attribution Builder

Allows you to easily cite open materials. Created by Open Washington, this tool will automatically generate the attribution for you.
 

MI ExplOER

This course includes eight self-paced online learning modules that serve as an introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education. 

Michigan OER Network

The Michigan OER (MI-OER) Network serves as a collective voice for the community to encourage the development and use of OER for educational, instructional, and public information purposes. 

Open Education Network

NMU is a member of Open Education Network (OEN), which offers many opportunities for those interested in pursing OER, including a Certificate in Open Education Practices, an annual conference, and other professional development opportunities. 

 

Overview

The Open Educational Resources Faculty Learning Community is part of a two year pilot program to increase OER use on NMU’s campus, with the hopes of making NMU more affordable, equitable, and accessible.

Apply for the 2024-25 OER Faculty Learning Community!

The OER Faculty Learning Community is premised on the belief that using open educational resources benefits both students and faculty in a number of ways that are consistent with NMU’s mission to be creative, inclusive, and sustainable. 

OER FLC members will be given a $1500 stipend and a community of support to find, incorporate, or create OER.  

Each faculty member selected to be part of an OER Faculty Learning Community cohort will be expected to:

  • Adopt or adapt OER materials for at least one course which would reduce the overall cost for the course, and commit to using OER for that course for the next two times it is offered. 
  • Attend at least one OER professional development activity or Learning Community event per semester, either held by NMU or a recommended external virtual event.
  • Give a presentation to share their OER experience by presenting at internal departmental meetings, CTL programs, or regional and/or national conferences.

Apply here for the 2024-25 Faculty Learning Community. Applications are due by March 22, 2024.
 

2023-2024 OER Faculty Learning Community Cohort

The 2023-24 cohort is composed of nine members from a wide range of departments. 

Jon Barch, Psychological Science
Yan Ciupak, Sociology and Anthropology
Nancy Gold, English
Mlado Ivanovic, Philosophy
Kaycee Jacobson, Nursing
Kathryn Johnson, History
Lanae Joubert, Nutrition/Health and Human Performance
Z.Z. Lehmberg, English
Kathryn Newton, Chemistry

 

 

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