Open Educational Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.
Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge” (Hewitt Foundation).
Open educational resources provide users with free and perpetual permission to: Retain – Reuse – Revise – Remix – Redistribute.
Finding materials and modifying them for your individual context, rather than reinventing the wheel, is an efficient use of your valuable time and also allows you to build upon the collective knowledge that is ‘out there’! You can find resources across many subject areas and teaching contexts through OER Repositories, through Pinterest, Twitter and other social media sites. Look for resources that are freely shared and do not require the provision of data to a company (there is no free lunch where data privacy is involved). It is important to understand licensing when using, remixing and sharing OER.
Sharing your own (unique or modified) resources in an OER repository is a highly professional, collaborative and valued endeavour. OER might include: free open textbooks, modules, lesson or unit plans, quizzes, videos/multi-media content, PowerPoint presentations, templates, etc. Consider adding to the collective knowledge base and extending the life of your work either by by contributing to an existing repository or sharing your work via social media or other platform.
If you are interested in pursuing online coursework for your own practice or to modify & adapt content for your classroom view our guide on OECs (Open Educational Courses).
Here are a few OER repositories that you might want to check out:
- OER Commons: https://www.oercommons.org/
- Share My Lesson: https://sharemylesson.com/
- TeachBC: http://teachbc.bctf.ca/
- Curriki: https://www.curriki.org/
- eCampus Ontario: https://www.ecampusontario.ca//
- BCcampus Open Ed: https://open.bccampus.ca/
- Open School BC has free K-12 textbooks, resources and BCcampus: OpenEd to find free post-secondary textbooks!
- Some Performance Assessment Resources that might support you in planning for assessment.
- ShareEd BC is a lesson planning/resource repository created and curated by the BC Ministry of Education – not truly ‘open’ but ‘open-ish’ to BC Teachers with accounts.
Next, you’ll want to get your resources ready for sharing and apply your own licensing to your creations (*these worksheets made for a workshop in UBC Teacher Ed Summer 2017 and 2018 will help you)
Slides from Summer 2018 OER workshops:
Open Education Repository Session for Education- Lecture Slides
- Follow the Open Education Resource Repositories Rubric to evaluate the resources as needed. For more information about open education, you are welcome to have a look at the UBC library Research Guide on OER by clicking here!
- If you have further questions about how to create, upload or assess an OER repository? ‘Ask a Question! or visit Open UBC.
*The workshop resources in this post were created in collaboration with the Open Ed team at UBC’s CTLT – Center for Teaching and Learning Technologies – and the Education Library.
**This resource, as all resources in the Scarfe Digital Sandbox, is shared as an open resource under a creative commons 4.0 license.