OER Building Blocks

Creating your own open educational resource (OER) can seem like an exciting, but overwhelming task. This blog post will walk you through some of the key building blocks you need to think about before and during the development process. Read on to learn more and before you know it you'll be building your own OER tower, much like this wonder pooch:


via GIPHY

Building Block One: Conduct Environmental Scan 

• Before you get started, you'll want to first take a look at what other OER might exist on your topic. If you find something has already been created, perhaps you could work on revising that OER instead of creating something completely from scratch.

• If you're not sure how to find an OER, Lansing Community College has created a great guide that lists some of the major repositories. Their guide also has a section that highlights subject specific OER. Additionally, I would recommend searching the Mason OER Metafinder. It allows you to search 15 major OER repositories using a single search form!

• Finally, by looking at what OER might be available on your topic, you'll start to develop a better idea of all the forms an OER can take -- such as an open textbook, a quiz bank, online modules, or even lesson plans.

Building Block Two: Create a Project Plan

• After you have an idea of the current gaps in existing OER repositories, it's useful to develop a project plan. Your project plan can help you set realistic timelines for yourself, map out the various pieces of the project that will need to be completed, and also help you start identifying some of your key stakeholders (students, faculty, administrators, etc).

• Some useful resources that can help you get started include: Melissa Falldin and Karen Lauritsen's Authoring Open Textbooks and Linda Frederiksen's Ten Tips for Authoring Success.

Building Block Three: Design a Needs Assessment

• Since you've decided to create an OER, it's also valuable to conduct a needs assessment with your eventual audience -- your students!

• The needs assessment piece can be done in a variety of ways. You might already have some of this data from previous course evaluations. But you can also conduct student surveys, interviews, or even focus groups to learn more about what your students would like to see in an OER for your subject area. Their feedback will be really valuable in shaping the design and structure of your OER. To learn more about different methods and approaches, watch this video from MIT Open Courseware.

Building Block Four: Gather your Resource Folks

• It's likely that there are some resource folks at your institution that can help you as you start creating your OER. Some individuals you might want to reach out to at your institution include:

• Instructional designers or developers: they will have the pedagogical background to help you finesse your project plan and they may also be able to help you with specific educational technologies and/or OER authoring platforms.

• Librarians: they can help you learn how to search for pre-existing OER, provide information on authoring platforms the library provides access to such as Pressbooks, and potentially help you with some licensing questions. Your institution's library might also have an OER grant program in place, which may be able to provide you with funds to finance aspects of your OER creation. 

• Copyright office or experts: they can help you with your advanced licensing questions, especially if you need help understanding some of the nuances of Creative Commons licenses.

Building Block Five: Determine what Open License you'll use

• In order to ensure that your OER can be freely used by others and also be revised and remixed by other educators, you'll want to choose a Creative Commons license that clearly identifies the permissions you're granting to others.

• A librarian or copyright expert at your institution can most likely help you weigh the pros and cons of different Creative Commons licenses. They should also be able to help you determine if it's okay to reuse and revise pieces of other OER when you create your own.

Building Block Six: Choose your Technology

• There are many different ways to create your OER; however, you might want to take a quick peek at the ALMS Framework. While it's great to make a free resource for other educators or students, your choice of technology can limit how easy it is for others to revise, remix, or repurpose your OER for their own course or educational needs.

Building Block Seven: Get Feedback on your Work in Progress

• While you're developing your OER, it's important to get real-time feedback from students, faculty members, librarians, instructional designers, and anyone else that's not part of your development team. They can help identify areas where your OER might be unclear or cumbersome to use. Gathering this feedback early on can help you fix design issues before you get too far in the process.

Building Block Eight: Give yourself Enough Time

• Since you're creating something new and possibly experimenting with various educational technologies, make sure you give yourself enough time. If you don't meet a project timeline -- don't fret! Making something innovative, student-centred, and useful takes time.

Images:

Yellow Tetris Block by OpenClipart-Vectors. Retrieved from Pixabay and resized for blog post.

Red Tetris Block by OpenClipart-Vectors. Retrieved from Pixabay and resized for blog post.

Orange Tetris Block by OpenClipart-Vectors. Retrieved from Pixabay and resized for blog post.

Blue Tetris Block by OpenClipart-Vectors. Retrieved from Pixabay and resized for blog post.

This blog post, authored by Stephanie Quail,

is  available under a CC BY 4.0 international license