This month’s blog post was contributed by Shannon Brenner, Instructional Designer at Northeast Iowa Community College. 

Open educational resources (OER) offer exciting opportunities for educators aiming to enhance their materials’ alignment with course learning outcomes—a critical factor for student success in higher education. Alignment, simply put, means making sure that learning objectives, teaching materials, assessments, and activities are all working together toward the same goals.

One of the greatest strengths of OER is their flexibility. Faculty can select and adapt high-quality resources that directly match their specific course outcomes. Unlike traditional textbooks, OER can be customized, ensuring that every part of the course directly supports the competencies and skills students need to develop.

Using a course blueprint alongside OER can significantly enhance alignment. A course blueprint is essentially a detailed plan that clearly maps out learning objectives, resources, activities, and assessments. By creating a blueprint, educators can visually confirm that each OER resource is purposefully chosen and effectively supports their learning goals. This clear structure helps faculty quickly identify any gaps or redundancies in their curriculum, ensuring consistency and coherence throughout the course.

Additionally, since OER can be adapted, educators are able to make real-time adjustments to their materials based on student feedback and performance. If assessments indicate areas where students struggle, faculty can swiftly update or supplement OER materials, enhancing learning experiences and outcomes.

Blueprinting at NICC

At Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC), the instructional design team supports alignment and OER efforts by helping instructors blueprint their courses with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). By feeding an AI chatbot such as Google Gemini our course guide, a list of course content and activities, and the OER table of contents, we can quickly show which units and learning objectives are covered by OER content. Additionally, these blueprints can show us where there may be gaps in materials, and can even suggest relevant OER resources to add to the course. You can view our process and watch a video tutorial on our Quality Course Design website.

Below is a sample image of what an AI chatbot can produce from your uploaded files:

Conclusion

Blueprinting with OER encourages collaboration among educators, fostering the development and sharing of aligned resources across departments and institutions. Our NICC public speaking instructors, for example, worked together to develop a common course blueprint that aligns their chosen OER to the course guide. Instructors can use this as a starting point and customize their activities and assessments. This collaborative approach ensures ongoing improvements in instructional quality and consistency. In short, combining OER with course blueprints creates a powerful strategy for maintaining clear alignment and improving student achievement.