This book was created as an ancillary resource to BCIT’s Introduction to Open Educational Resources course and contains all of the course content.

Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

  1. Identify the characteristics of an open educational resource (OER)
  2. Compare Creative Commons licenses
  3. Find open educational resources to use
  4. Choose tools for creating open educational resources
  5. Decide which platforms to share open educational resources on
  6. Discuss challenges that arise when working in the open

This course should take 1-3 hours to complete. This is a self-directed course and you can work through it at your own pace. At the end of each section, there will be an optional list of further reading if you are interested in learning more about the topic.

 Course Outline

These are the modules included in this course:

Module 1: Introduction

This module will address:

  • What is open?
  • Why is open valuable?
  • Licensing

Module 2: Finding OERs

This module will address:

  • How to search?
  • Where to search?
  • Common open repositories
  • Finding specific materials

Module 3: Creating OERs

This module will address:

  • Why create an OER?
  • Platforms and tools
  • Adapting and using existing resources
  • Addressing accessibility

Module 4: Sharing OERs

This module will address:

  • Why share your OER?
  • OER repositories

Module 5: Challenges

This module will address:

  • Availability
  • Ownership
  • Quality Assurance
  • Sustainability
  • Technology
  • Time

Key Terms

Open

When something is described as “open”, it means that it has been made available with little to no restrictions for other people to access or use. Open can also describe practices, means, and methods that support the idea that knowledge and learning should be available to everyone by reducing barriers to access and use.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Teaching and learning resources which are created and published to be publicly accessible by using open tools and licenses which allow for their use, reuse, improvement, or redistribution.

Open Educational Practices

There are many different terms used to describe the various activities and practices associated with creating and working in the open environment. Open educational practices encompass all of the following:

Beetham, H., Falconer, I., McGill, L. and Littlejohn, A. Open practices: briefing paper. JISC, 2012  https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/51668352/OpenPracticesBriefing
Practice Examples
Production, management, use and reuse of open educational resources
  • Openly licensing recorded lectures and associated materials, and making them publicly available via the institution’s website.
  • Collating and managing openly licensed materials relevant to a particular subject area in an open repository.
Developing and applying open/public pedagogies in teaching practice
  • Facilitating/participating in massively online open courses.
  • Designing courses or assignments that invite students to contribute to public knowledge resources alongside teachers, academics, and the public
Open learning and gaining access to open learning opportunities
  • Learners accessing freely available online content.
  • Learners collaborating on open knowledge-building projects.
  • Open accreditation or certification is an emerging aspect of open learning.
Practicing open scholarship, to encompass open access publication, open science and open research
  • Making research data available in an open institutional repository, perhaps supported by apps to enable learning/teaching use.
  • Publishing research findings in an open peer-reviewed journal or repository
Open sharing of teaching ideas and know-how
  • Contributing to an open wiki or database of expertise in the use of specific learning technologies.
  • Sharing examples of teaching practice in an open subject community or repository.
Using open technologies (web-based platforms, applications and services) in an educational context
  • Using freely available third-party software or web 2.0 services to support learning activities, ensuring all learners have equal access
  • Building open environments for collaboration using cloud services such as social bookmarking and media sharing sites.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Introduction to Open Educational Resources Copyright © by Amanda Grey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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