Evaluating Resources

Created Feb. 7, 2024 by Alisa Cook

Title: Evaluating Resources

Author(s): 

Date: 

Training Time Frame: 

Training Tools, Equipment: 

Training Methods, Techniques: Lecture, group discussion, guided practice, independent practice

Performance Objectives: 

  1. Understand differences in perceptions of quality
  2. Identify collaboration sources for reviewing OER
  3. Apply different rubrics to OER
  4. Recognize quality in an OER
  1. Module 1- Quality

Watch this video before diving in to the discussion.

Discussion:

Who here is having some hesitations about quality when it comes to OER? Ask for a raise of hands.

This is understandable! I am sure you all want assurances that you are providing students the most reputable information. Have any of you used copyrighted materials that were of poor quality? Just because something is open or copyright doesn’t immediately equate to quality.

What does quality mean to you? Write responses on board.

Possible answers or ideas to help get the conversation started include:

  • Usable
  • Functional
  • Reliable
  • Accessible
  • Credible
  • Accurate
  • Clear
  • Relevant

If no one says “Students learn when they use the materials” offer this as a suggestion.

Because, really, for educational materials, the degree to which they support learning is the only meaning of quality we should care about.

Attribution:

On Quality and OER by David Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License version 4.0.

  1. Module 2-Educator to Educator Collaborations

Professional Learning Communities or PLC’s revolve around the idea that educators will perfect and improve their teaching based upon collaboration with others. Using OER is just a larger scale of your school or district PLCs. It opens your world to so many different possibilities.

By extending the audience of the materials outside the classroom, there are more eyes on the materials. This is the reason why open source software has been as successful as proprietary software packages: since the material is freely and widely available there is increased opportunity for feedback and increased the likelihood that someone will identify errors. Although the later characteristic may initially scare faculty members who have not had their materials viewed outside the classroom before, there is evidence that faculty received useful feedback from publishing their materials as OER. Although they can and will be improved by sharing, we should be proud to share the high-quality materials that we have.

OER also goes the other way. If you find a resource that has good content but is missing a few pieces you can remix it to better suit your needs.

Discussion:

What are some ways you could integrate OER into your current PLCs?

Attribution:

SI521 “Open Educational Resources at the University of Michigan” Open Textbooks/Open Learning is students contributed book licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. 

  1. Module 3- Evaluate it

Once you have found an OER you wish to use, take time to evaluate it.

Five common elements of a quality OER include:

  1. That the content under consideration covers the subject area and standards appropriately.
  2. That the content of the OER is accurate and free of major errors and spelling mistakes.
  3. That the license of the content can be used or altered for the course’s needs.
  4. That the OER is clearly written and appropriate for the students’ level of understanding.
  5. That the accessibility of the content is appropriate for all students.

Attribution:

Open Education Resources (OER) written by the Iowa State University Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license

  1. Module 4- Rubrics

The Wyoming Department of Education’s Standards and Assessment team worked together to  provide a OER rubric for educators to utilize. If evaluating the resource is taking you a long time, then you shouldn’t use the resource. It should be a quick process so you can either use it or find another one that is better quality.  

The WDE Rubric can be found here.

Activity:

Review the WDE Rubric, answer any questions. Ask if anyone has a resource they found today would like to use with the rubric? If not, use this one as backup:

Example:

Subject: Early Education

Title: Dramatic Play Farm/Farmers Market

There are several other rubrics available for use as well when evaluating resources:

  • Achieve.org has developed eight OER rubrics as well as an evaluation tool to help users determine the degree of alignment of OER to the Common Core State Standards, and aspects of quality of OER.
  • This 2-page rubric is a synthesis version of the eight (8) separate rubrics for the evaluation of OERs created by ACHIEVE.org. It is meant as a ready reference for quick evaluation of an OER.
  • Credit: Created and shared by Rodney Birch of George Fox University
  • This handbook will guide a user through the process of evaluating an online resources using Achieve OER Evaluation Tool, which is hosted on OERCommons.org.

Attribution:

Open Educational Resources (OER): What are OER? Was written by the University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. 

  1. Module 5- Wrap-up
  • One of the many benefits of OER is having the ability to remix resources to fit your classroom needs.
  • Making sure the resources you have found are of quality is also important.
  • By utilizing the WDE rubric you will be able to quickly identify high-quality resources.

Attribution:

On Quality and OER by David Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License version 4.0.

Open Educational Resources (OER): What are OER? Was written by the University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. 

Open Education Resources (OER) written by the Iowa State University Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license

SI521 “Open Educational Resources at the University of Michigan” Open Textbooks/Open Learning is students contributed book licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. 

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