Some questions to ask when evaluating:
- Does the content under consideration cover the subject area appropriately?
- Is the OER content accurate and free of major errors and spelling mistakes?
- Can the license of the content be used or altered for the course’s needs?
- Is the OER clearly written and appropriate for the students’ level of understanding?
- How accessible is this content? Will it be accessible for your students, or is it too technical? Or is it robust and challenging enough for your students?
Adapted from "Evaluate OER" by Abbey Elder, Iowa State University Library under a Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0
- Faculty Guide for Evaluating OER Developed by BCCampus OpenEd Resources (BCOER), this document provides a checklist of traits to look for in OER
- Faculty OER Toolkit This is an excellent resource for faculty who would like to adopt and adapt OER materials from BCcampus Open Ed.
- OER Handbook “a guide for those who are just getting started in the creation of open educational resources (OER).”
- Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects The following rubrics represent an evaluation system for objects found within Open Education Resources.
The term adaptation is commonly used to describe the process of making changes to an existing work. Though we can also replace “adapt” with revise, modify, alter, customize, or other synonym that describes the act of making a change.
In addition to cost to students, one of the biggest advantages of choosing an open textbook is it gives faculty the legal right to add to, adapt, or delete the content of the textbook to fit their specific course without obtaining permission from the copyright holder. This is possible because the copyright holder has already granted permission by releasing their work using an open — or Creative Commons — license. This type of license gives users permission to use and reuse, share, copy, retain and modify the textbook without consulting the author.
"Definition of Adapt" is a chapter in the Adaptation Guide by BCcampus and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
- Adaptation Guide A reference to adapting or revising an open textbook
- Customizing and Authoring Content If you are looking to use open educational resources within your course, but you cannot find OERs that completely fit the course, you will want to customize an existing OER or author a new one.
- Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know This is a five-step guide for faculty, and those who support faculty, who want to modify an open textbook.
- The OER Starter Kit by Abbey Elder This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education. [Version 1.1. Revised September 5th, 2019.]
When an instructor adopts an OER, they use an OER as-is in their course to replace high-cost materials.
Adopting an OER means that an instructor is integrating Open Educational Materials into their courses without significant revisions, similar to adopting and integrating any new textbook into an existing course. The difference here is that when adopting OER, there is no publisher support.
The work of adopting OER includes creating or finding supplementary and ancillary materials for students. There are many resources online you can adopt and adapt, but this is added onto the work of finding and evaluating an OER textbook for a course.
- OER Finding and Adopting Guide for Instructors: Worksheet by Kate Hess, Kirkwood Community College
When an author decides to create OER materials, they are publishing and licensing their your own work as OER.
The Open Education Network writes that when choosing to write a book an author has a blank slate of opportunity, but sometimes opportunity means not re-inventing the wheel. There may be resources or books that exist that will suit your needs entirely, or will be close to what you need. After having discussed what the ideal structure of your book looks like, and what elements you would like to see within it, the next step is to evaluate the books and resources that have already been created. Can you use all or some of these materials? How much modification will be necessary to suit the goals of your project?
This section of the OER Lib Guide is adapted from the chapter "Adapting or Authoring" in Authoring Open Textbooks by Open Education Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
- Authoring Open Textbooks "This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. "
- Self-Publishing Guide A reference for writing and self-publishing an open textbook.
- Create a Resource with Open Author Create and customize open educational resources to meet your needs and the needs of your learners.
- Creating and Modifying Open Educational Resources A chapter-by-chapter informational tutorial for USG faculty and staff interested in creating or adapting open educational resources.