The OAS Hub Open Educational Resources & Practices Starter Kit
Overview
This Open Educational Resources & Practices Starter Kit is designed to support educators in identifying, evaluating, curating, and authoring/remixing resources.
Getting Started with OER
Information
Open Educational Resources (OER) refer to any teaching and learning materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under a license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution.
Open Educational Practices (OEP) refer to collaborative teaching and learning practices that help educators to advance a culture of sharing and active learning through OER, including:
- Collaboration: connect with educators with diverse expertise, brainstorm innovative ideas, contribute resources and best practices, get and give feedback, reflect and share our successes and challenges with our global community.
- Curation: identify, evaluate, organize, and share resources that meet our learning objectives.
- Design: create high-quality instructional materials by utilizing supports, like authoring templates and planning tools. Think deeply about how we design resources to meet the unique needs of our learners. Reflect and refine resources for continuous improvement.
- Leadership: present, train, and share with others to build awareness and advocacy.
Practice
Which Open Educational Practices are you interested in advancing in your work?
Get started with Open Educational Resources and Practices by:
- Registering & creating an OER Commons profile.
- Joining the OAS Train the Trainers Group.
- Exploring group resource folders and adding new folders.
- Posting and replying to group discussions.
Need help registering? Please read the help articles here. How to Create an Account.
Identify OER
Information
Before searching for resources to use in your work, what considerations do you make?
- Are there any specific content gap areas in my existing courses? For example, I might have an urgent need for math modeling or STEM literacy resources.
- Are there new types of digital materials that I would like to integrate into my existing courses? For example, I might want to offer my students more opportunities to use interactive games and simulations.
- Are there innovative teaching and learning strategies that I would like to incorporate into my instructional plan? For example, I might desire to try some kinesthetic learning or guided inquiry activities.
- Are there current events and news topic areas that I need resources for? For example, I might be interested in finding the latest resources on climate change or refugees.
Practice
Type keyword(s) into the Search Bar or use Advanced Search to identify additional search criteria, such as material type, educational level, and more. Once you get your search results, you can further filter them.
You can also browse resource collections, groups, and hubs, such as the OAS Hub for the Americas with continuous learning collections for different content areas/practices and audiences, working groups for content areas and specific projects, and more.
Need help searching? Read the help articles here: How to use Search, Advanced Search, and Filter
Evaluate OER
Information
What makes a resource high-quality? What do you specifically look for in a resource to use in your work?
Choose a tool or tools to explore further. How might you customize these tools to create your own evaluation criteria?
Explore the different Evaluation Tools below:
Practice
Choose a tool or tools to explore further. How might you customize these tools to create your own evaluation criteria? Evaluate a resource using your own criteria by writing your review as a comment on the resource.
Curate OER
Information
Share an example of something you have curated. There are many ways that we thoughtfully collect and organize things that are important to us. Our homes are representations of how we curate collectables, art, books, plants, etc. We also curate articles and photos using social media like twitter, instagram, facebook, and pinterest.
1. What considerations do you make when curating resources to use in your work?
Here are some curation considerations from OER Commons' digital librarians:
- User-Centered Design: The first step our digital librarians take in curation is to research their intended audience. Who are we curating for? What are their needs and preferences, learning goals and standards. What is top of mind and of the utmost importance to them currently?
- Identify and Select Resources: Next digital librarians select resources that 1.) Address the user's needs and 2.) Meet the OER Commons curation criteria of having open licensing, being up to date and relevant, and high-quality.
- Describe and Organize of Resources: Digital librarians put a lot of consideration into how they describe and organize resources so that they are easy to access and use by their intended audience. They add relevant and appropriate tags directly to resource descriptions to support ease of discovery in search. They create clearly labeled shared folders and subfolders to support accessibility of resource collections.
- Share and Promote Resources: Digital Librarians utilize collaborative spaces, like Hubs and Groups to share resources. They also use social media tools, like the twitter; newsletter mailings; and in person and virtual presentations and trainings to promote their collections with a larger audience.
2. Brainstorm your curation plans
User-centered Design: Who are we curating for? What are their needs and preferences, learning goals and standards? What is top of mind and of the utmost importance to them currently?
Identify and Select Resources: Select resources that 1.) Address the user's needs and 2.) Meet the your evaluation criteria shared last week
Describe and Organize of Resources: How will you describe and organize resources so that they are easy to access and use by their intended audience? Such as add relevant and appropriate tags directly to resource descriptions to support ease of discovery in search and create clearly labeled shared folders and subfolders to support accessibility of resource collections
Share and Promote Resources: What methods will you use to promote your curated resources? Such as social media, blogs, newsletters, listervs, websites, presentations and trainings
Practice
Submit an open educational resource to share in the OER Commons library: Click Submit a Resource in our group and add the link and descriptive information.
Create folders / subfolders and save resources you want to use and share: In group resourses click on New and add the title of the folder. To save resources, click Save on the resource and select the folder you wish to save it to. For inspiration, check out this example of a group curating language learning resources for the Pathways Project at Boise State University.
Add descriptive tags and keywords to resources you curate directly on the resource by clicking Add New Tag.
OER Authoring & Remixing