Creating OER

Creating teaching and learning materials from scratch can be intimidating, but chances are you have already created notes for your courses or there are some existing OER that could be remixed and adapted. Here is how to start sharing your knowledge freely and openly as an OER.

Why create an OER?

Wish your current course materials were a better fit with what you want your students to learn?
Want to contribute to easing the financial burden of higher education for your students?
Have you created course content that you wish could be used more widely, but is unlikely to be published as a commercial resource?
Is it difficult to find resources for your course because the commercial market is too small for the topic and perspectives you are teaching?
Want to give your students the opportunity to contribute to the creation of knowledge with a renewable assignment?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, why not create an OER?

OER creation workflow [1]

Step 1: Research

Explore existing OER in your subject area. See: Finding OER
Assess the quality of what you have found. See: Evaluating an OER
Familiarize yourself with open licences and copyright for OER. See: Open licences and copyright

Tip: Use a spreadsheet or a citation manager like Zotero to keep track of what you have found. It will facilitate permission requests (if needed) and attributions later.

Step 2: Pre-production

Define your OER project goals. Are you remixing or adapting existing OER or are you creating a new resource?
Identify the learning outcomes of your OER. Will your resource include learning activities?
Determine the hosting platform and format(s) of your OER.
Determine which Creative Commons licence will be applied to your OER. This will have an impact on the third-party content you can use in your OER and if permissions will be required.
Create your team.

Tip: Book a consultation with a TLSS specialist to discuss pedagogical approaches and technologies you could use in your OER. See: Request a pedagogical consultation

Step 3: Design

Scope the content and flesh out the outline of your OER.
Determine what will be remixed, adapted or created.
Identify media needs, i.e. images, video, audio, interactive activities.
Use common formats, public platforms, and plan to share source files to ensure accessibility and reuse.
Select the tools you will be using, keeping in mind your team’s abilities to work with low, medium or high-tech options.

Tip: Organize a one or two-day sprint with your team to design a prototype.

Step 4: Development

Write, arrange, and revise content.
Get copyright permissions if needed and find alternatives if permission cannot be obtained.
Copyedit and format.
Cite and credit properly. See: How to Attribute Creative Commons-Licensed Content: Best Practices
Perform an accessibility check. See: Checklist for Accessibility [downloadable Word document]
Add the selected Creative Commons licence to your OER.

Step 5: Publication

Export your OER in various formats and make the source files available (if possible).
Make your OER available publicly from its hosting platform.
Submit your OER to various repositories to increase its discoverability. The Library OER support service can do that for you ([email protected]).
Promote your OER.

Tip: Brightspace is not a public platform. While you can deposit your OER there to make it available in your courses, the learning management system should not be the main hosting platform for your OER.

Co-creating with students and renewable assignments

Renewable assignments, unlike those only reviewed by the teacher and then discarded, encourage learners to become more engaged, knowing that future students can benefit and continue building upon them.
Many assignments are “disposable.” Renewable assignments, on the other hand, add value beyond earning a mark — they provide resources that are useful and usable by others, whether other students in the course or the public. Examples include students creating notes or demonstrations for other students in the same course (and possibly also posted publicly for others), students editing articles on Wikipedia, or students producing research that can be used by a community group. Even those assignments that might otherwise be “disposable” can be made renewable by sharing them with other students in a course and, if the student agrees, publicly. [2]

Example:

C. Geller, (2020), Copyright and Related Rights: A Guide for Performance Librarians, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (created in MUS 4924 Research Project I)

Student Agreement to Publish Coursework as an Open Educational Resource (OER) under a Creative Commons Licence [PDF]

Recommended resources

Brunet, M. & Lachaîne, C. (2021). How to Attribute Creative Commons-Licensed Content: Best Practices. University of Ottawa Library, CC BY 4.0.

Coolidge, A. Doner, S., Robertson, T., & Gray, J. (2018). Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition. BCcampus, CC BY 4.0.

eCampusOntario. (2023). Mastering Open Ed: Licensing, Accessibility, Creation, and Publishing OER. eCampusOntario, CC BY-NC 4.0.

Mays, E. (ed.). (2017). A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students, Rebus Community, CC BY 4.0.

Shilling, K. (2023). Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation. Rebus Community, CC BY 4.0.

References:

[1) Workflow adapted from: fabriqueREL, (2020), Parcours de création d’une REL en 6 étapes, CC BY 4.0; Red Deer Polytechnic, (2023), Creation of Open Educational Resources (OER), CC BY 4.0; and A. Santiago, (2020), A Framework for Creating OER, CC BY 4.0.

[2] Adapted from: eCampusOntario, (2023), “Student Engagement,” in Mastering Open Ed: Licensing, Accessibility, Creation, and Publishing OER, CC BY-NC 4.0. See also: D. Wiley, “What is Open Pedagogy?” Improving Learning, 21 October 2013, CC BY 4.0 and C. Hendricks, “Non-Disposable Assignments in Intro to Philosophy,” You’re the Teacher, 18 August 2015, CC BY 4.0.

Unless otherwise noted, the content on this page is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.