An international celebration of open access (OA) is taking place this week. This is the third post in a series of daily posts about open access.
Open educational resources (OER) are a critical feature of the open access content landscape. Per the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), OER are “teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use.” Beyond the ability to access these materials at no cost, the open licenses assigned to OER by creators grant users permission to modify, remix, and redistribute derivatives of these works. Practically speaking, this means that instructors have the flexibility to make these materials more relevant to their students, the learning outcomes of their course, and to their own teaching practice. They may update the OER with more recent research, swap out case studies and examples that better reflect the demographics or interests of their students, or translate the content into new languages. Open licenses afford any user these rights, and the possibilities for creating better course materials are endless.
UT libraries supports the adoption and creation of OER through professional development, direct librarian guidance, course materials review, and multiple library-supported programs. Today, we highlight two of the OER learning opportunities and platforms currently available for faculty.
This self-paced Canvas course is designed to deepen awareness of Open Educational Resources. It’s the perfect place to begin if you’re unfamiliar with OER, the Creative Commons Licenses, or wish to gain ideas about OER adoption or authorship. Available to the entire UT community, participants in this course will learn to:
- Define Open Educational Resources (OER)
- Explain the benefits of incorporating OER into a learning environment
- Differentiate between the various Creative Commons licenses
- Navigate OER repositories and other resources for finding OER
- Evaluate the relevance of OER
- Locate and adopt OER into your learning environment
- Understand the basics of creating or remixing OER, including how to
- License your resource
- Utilize tools for inclusivity and accessibility
- Involve your students in creating the resource
The OER Crash Course is open for self-enrollment, so begin your OER journey today!
Perhaps you’re already familiar with OER and looking for a platform to house your work. UT Austin has a Pressbooks subscription that may be perfect for your needs. Pressbooks is an open textbook creation platform where authors can write and publish open access books. Their work can then be exported into several formats, including PDF, MOBI, and EPUB, and shared. Our subscription includes the web-based book format, which allows users to embed multimedia assets, such as videos, quizzes, and other interactive activities, into the work. We are also currently working on a Pressbooks/Canvas integration, which would allow activities to be completed within Pressbooks and then recorded in the Canvas gradebook.
All books published through Pressbooks must carry a creative commons license, and cannot be offered for purchase. Additionally, as all Pressbooks are openly licensed, it’s a great place to search for OER textbooks to support your course. There’s no need for a Pressbooks account to browse their directory, so take a look today!
If you are interested in getting additional access to the Pressbooks, or have questions about the resource, please contact Heather Walter (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu), Tocker Open Education Librarian at UTL.
UTL librarians are also pleased to support instructors in their OER search, adoption, and creation needs outside of these programs through consultation and reference services. Contact us to learn more about any of these options, or fill out this form to request a review of OER and other free or affordable course materials that may meet your needs.
Want to get started with OER or find other free or low cost course materials? Contact Heather Walter, Tocker Open Education Librarian (heather.walter@austin.utexas.edu).
