Why share your OER?

One of the primary motivations for faculty to create an OER is to benefit the students in their classroom. However, when OERs are shared widely they have the potential to impact many more people.

When you contribute OER, whether you reuse, remix, or create something new, you are advocating for and supporting Open Pedagogy. Rooted in the concept that access to learning and education is a human right, OER advocates the world over have harnessed that idea to provide more access to more resources to more people than ever before.

The following are a few things to consider when deciding to share your content:

What do I want my OER to do for me?

It may be that the intent for sharing your OER is simply the use by others. This is a fine reason to share your resource. However, you may also want to share to connect with other educators, to gain metrics around the content being used, to promote the work so others may improve upon it. Knowing your intent can help direct where the content should be shared.

Who do I want to have primary access to my OER?

Identifying your key audiences is crucial for developing a plan for sharing your OER. Different spaces may cater to specific audiences, age ranges, and subject expertise. Some spaces may provide functionality that allows you to network with other educators creating similar content. You may also need to develop separate marketing plans or different messages depending on the audience.

Are impact metrics important to me?

Impact metrics refer to whether the repository tracks data about how your resource is performing (e.g. number of downloads, citations). Some repositories will provide very detailed metrics about your OER (e.g. geographic location of downloads, number of views, etc.). Deciding what kind of reporting is important to you and how you will use the metrics is a way to focus where you may want to share your content and what additional planning you may need to undertake to get the right impact metric details. For example, tracking if others have modified your work can be complicated and may require a different approach to data collection.

OER repositories

Creating an OER is the first step, but in order for your work to be open it must be made available online for others to access. As we learned in Module 2, OER repositories are designed specifically to collect OER resources together for other people to find and use.

Repositories that allow sharing/uploading

• Open BCIT Collection – OERs created by BCIT faculty
• Sol*r – BCcampus’ open repository
• AMSER – science and math related resources
• CTE Online – curriculum materials
• HumBox – humanities focused materials
• MERLOT – multidisciplinary and multimedia; can submit materials or create them on MERLOT’s content builder platform
• National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science – science case studies
• OASIS – multidisciplinary;
• OER Commons – multidisciplinary; can submit materials or create content in their content creation module
• Open Textbook Library – multidisciplinary; can submit textbooks for review

The types of repositories listed above have different features and are created for different purposes. Because of this, you may find you are sharing your resource across multiple repositories. However, there are many repositories out there and narrowing down which you will use is an important step in your workflow. There is no single repository that will meet all of your needs or have all of these features, so you will need to pick a few that are most important to you. The following are some of the most common features that will impact your decision about whether or not to use a particular repository.

Hosting

Hosting refers to whether or not the OER can be uploaded to the repository directly. If not, then the resource must live elsewhere (e.g., a personal website) and a link is put in the repository.

Licensing

Some repositories require their items to have a specific license attached to them. Most repositories will accept a range of licenses, but there are some that are more specific.

Peer Review

Peer review is offered by some repositories as a service. In most cases, having your resource peer-reviewed is not required.

Accessibility

Sometimes a repository will have accessibility guidelines for their resources. Some repositories will have special features such as being able to upload multiple formats, video players, or embedded viewing.

Indexing/Discoverability

If the repository is indexed, it will show up within an overarching search engine (e.g., Google) which in turn makes its resources more findable.

Analytics

Analytics refers to whether the repository tracks data and is able to provide information about how the resource is performing (e.g., number of downloads, citations).

Archiving/Preservation

Some repositories are more stable than others or offer archiving services to ensure the OER is preserved for future use.

Module quiz

Test your knowledge about sharing an OER.

Summary

Adaptation statements

This module adapted content from:

• Sharing and Promoting OER by SUNY OER, licensed under CC-BY
• Open Education – Sharing Libguide by UBC Library, licensed under CC-BY
• Program for Open Scholarship and Education – Sharing OER by Open UBC, licensed under CC-BY