An Introduction to OER for Langara Instructors

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Briana Fraser

This resource has been designed to help Langara instructors incorporate open educational resources, or OER, into their teaching practice. The module consists of five lessons. Each lesson includes course content, an activity to get you started, as well as review questions and links to additional resources about OER. As you work your way through the lessons you will learn the basics of OER, open licenses, and adopting, adapting, and creating OER. Feel free to pick and choose lessons based on your previous knowledge of OER. 

Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this module, learners will be able to:

  1. Define OER
  2. List benefits of using OER
  3. Define open licenses
  4. Describe Creative Commons licenses
  5. State the components of an attribution statement
  6. Locate resources with Creative Commons licenses
  7. State when a work can be adapted
  8. Describe the steps involved in creating Creative Commons licensed resources

In this lesson, we will define OER, list examples of OER, and outline the benefits of using OER.

What are OER?

Have you ever found something from the internet that could be a perfect resource (image, video, quiz, etc.) for your course, and you spent hours trying to figure out the copyright issues with that resource? You couldn’t find any Terms of Use, and there was no author information, so you didn’t know who to contact to get the permission?

For more information on using copyright-protected resources for teaching and learning, see Langara's Copyright Website:
(http://langara.ca/library/copyright/index.html)

Wouldn’t it have been nice if that resource somehow said “I’m free to use, no strings attached, you don’t need to ask for my permission because it is already granted”?

Open educational resources are an answer to that need.

There are millions of educational resources out there that are available for others to freely use. 

Here is how OER is defined in more specific terms:

Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others
(definition by Hewlett Foundation).

To put it another way. OER are:

    • Format: materials in any medium, digital or otherwise
    • Conditions: that either
      • reside in the public domain or
      • have been released under an open license,
    • Nature: permit free use and re-purposing by others.

An essential component of OER is the user's active engagement with materials. This process involves: 

  • using and adapting others’ materials for your own use;

  • sharing back modifications to or comments about others’ materials so that future users can benefit;

  • and, sharing materials that you have created, either individually or in groups with other teachers and/or learners.


Examples of OER
Examples.pngExamples of OER

Examples of OER

Examples of OER by Briana Fraser, CC BY

Download: Examples.docx


Why Use OER?

In the following video instructors outline their experiences using OER in their teaching practice.

Faculty Members' Experiences Using Open Educational Resources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OUZJtGuyVg
Lumen Learning: Supporting Students to Success with Open Educational Resources by Lumen Learning, CC BY.

Educators and learners as well as higher educational institutions are driving OER development. OER provide an alternative to the rising costs of education. They alleviate the burden of student debt while providing opportunities to students who might not otherwise be able to afford or access materials. For example, in some countries like South Africa, many educators and learners are tapping into OER as the only source for textbooks.

OER provide an opportunity to try new ways of teaching and learning, many of which are more collaborative and participatory.

Economic benefits  Releasing OER can have significant reputational gain. It is an opportunity to be a leader in a fast moving and highly significant area. Letting students preview high quality resources prior to applying at your institution may boost recruitment and is good practice.
 Good Sharing Practice Apart from the economic reasons, publishing resources openly is reclaiming traditional academic practice of sharing knowledge. Releasing material can help bridge gaps between groups. Seeing the content used for for teaching and learning in universities can help people realize that higher education may not be too big a step for them.
 Educator Perspectives Creation of OER has big benefits to individuals, educational institutions and society as a whole. If you are an educator it makes sense to create and use OER.
Instructors are responsible for creating great learning experiences, not (necessarily) for creating all the resources needed for this themselves. Reusing existing OER frees up time that can be spent on other aspects of the teaching and learning process. Their use can help you expand your range of teaching materials.
If you are teaching a common subject, chances are that somebody else has already created great learning resources for the same or a similar context. Students can also access these resources on their own, so why not point them to these resources or incorporate them into your teaching? This can provide motivation to further improve the resources and re-release them openly for others to reuse.

Getting your materials out there as an educator can both help raise your profile and allow your resources to be improved by other users. Creating OER can also improve practice by encouraging reflection, and may facilitate networking and collaboration with other subject experts. Use and creation of OER facilitates looking outside your immediate environment and getting broader and different views on topic areas.
 Institutional Perspectives Creating OER puts content-rich material on the the web that will be indexed by Google and can be used to attract potential students to departmental web pages. OER creation and use align well with institutional missions where (at least) part of that mission is to disseminate knowledge broadly and with minimal impediment.

OER can also make it easier for staff to find what other educators have produced, encouraging further sharing within your institution. It sends a message that reuse - building on the efforts of others - is more efficient than a go-it-alone approach and can bring pedagogical benefits. OER work allows potential partners to see what you cover in your courses, which may facilitate partnerships with, for example, local colleges or businesses.
OER production and use can be encouraged by institutions who offer some professional recognition to scholars who practice open education.
 Learner Perspectives OER help learners can find information instantly on virtually any topic, and connect with peers across the globe. OER can help informal learners to build up confidence about formal education and support their transition into institutional contexts. By lowering the cost of education, OER also help students to begin and complete their courses of study, where they may feel more free to focus because of reduced financial pressure.

Using OER allows students to be educators and start experimenting with learning and teaching materials. As a learner you can become an educator, mentor, facilitator, or simply a much better informed citizen.

Some disadvantages of OER include:

  • Quality of available OER materials is inconsistent
  • No common standard for review of OER accuracy and quality 
  • Need to check accuracy of content
  • Customization necessary to match departmental and/or college curriculum requirements
  • Technical requirements to access vary
  • Technological determinism created by the delivery tool

Who Uses OER?

Educators across the K-16 spectrum are taking advantage of OER to:

  1. move away from traditional textbooks and

  2. improve learning by introducing students to more varied and current learning content. In higher education, faculty are adopting OER as a way to save their students money but also increase the likelihood that students will acquire and read learning content.

Who isn't using OER? Too often faculty at higher education institutions are not aware of the existence of OER. Academic librarians are joining forces to help create more awareness at their institutions.

Activity

Experience:

Read the following about the OER movement:

Review Questions:

  1. What are Open Educational Resources?
  2. What are the advantages and disadvantages to using OER for teaching?

Resources:

Open Education Resources, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
http://www.hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/

Open Education Fact Sheet, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition
http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/Open%20Education%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

 Creative Commons Licence
This lesson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
About Open Educational Resources contains material from: Module 2: Understanding OER, by Open Washington, used under a CC-BY 4.0 license; OER Defined, by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license; Lumen Learning: Supporting Students to Succeed with Open Educational Resources, by Lumen Learning, used under a CC-BY license; Discovering Open Educational Resources (OER): Home, by Temple University Libraries, used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license; Open Education Handbook, by The Free Textbook Project, used under a CC-BY-SA license, and Introduction to Open Educational Resources, by Judy Baker, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license.



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