Module 7: Adapting, Creating, & Sharing OER

Learning Objectives

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

Understand reasons for adapting and creating OER
Walk through the basic steps for adapting and creating OER with proper attributions and licensing
Discover platforms that can be used for modifying and creating OER and select a platform for your OER authorship project
Consider which Creative Commons license to apply to your OER
Adapt, remix and/ or create OER materials for your course

Adapting Existing OER

One advantage of OER is that they give teachers and faculty the legal right to add to, adapt, or delete content from openly licensed source material in order to fit the needs of their specific course. And there’s no need to obtain permission from the copyright holder! As you learned in earlier modules, this is possible because the source material’s copyright holder has already granted permission by releasing their work using an open Creative Commons license.

In this video, faculty from Austin Community College in Texas describe their experiences developing OER:

You can learn more about the work of Iowa-specific OER practitioners at Iowa OER’s YouTube channel. Here, you’ll find recorded webinars from faculty, librarians, and others who have developed OER initiatives and projects.

If you are considering making changes to an open resource, such as an open textbook, ask yourself:

How much content do I wish to change? Do I want to remove chapters, reorganize chapters, or rewrite entire chapters of content?
In what technical format is the original textbook — a Word doc, Google Doc, a PDF? A Word document is much easier to modify than a PDF document.
What type of license is the content released under? Does it have a Creative Commons license that allows for modification or adaptation of the content?
How comfortable are you with using technology and creating content?
How will my students access the content? Will it be available in Blackboard, Google Classroom, OER Commons, or another online hosting service?

Creating OER

The most ambitious approach to OER is to create an open textbook yourself. Several teachers and faculty members across Iowa have done so, often turning their lecture notes and other teaching materials into a more formal text or incorporating open source material with their own writing. You can browse the Iowa Universities and Colleges group on OER Commons for examples of open textbooks authored or adapted in our state.

Writing an open text book from scratch, however, is a huge undertaking. In addition to research and writing, it involves resource curation, understanding and applying accessibility principles, layout and design work, editing, proofreading, attribution, licensing, and learning to use a publishing platform. Unlike with commercial publishing, the author may not have formal support for these activities.

Before you write an OER textbook, you should do a thorough search for open resources that already exist. Someone might have already created content that can be repurposed and adapted to suit your needs. Source material doesn’t have to be perfect in order for it to be useful. You can customize existing OER materials for your course or compile OER readings from various sources. You can also rewrite content, correct errors, or add local context or examples.

As more and more open textbooks are created, you might be able to find one that suits your course perfectly, or suits it well enough.

The ALMS Framework

For a work to be truly open and allow the 5Rs permissions, it should be meaningfully accessible and editable by others. How can you ensure adopters can easily reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain the work? The ALMS framework, established by Hilton, Wiley, Stein, and Johnson (2010), highlights the vital importance of offering source files and creating work in easily adoptable formats. The ALMS acronym stands for:

Access: Offer OER in formats that can be easily edited with freely accessible tools.

Level: Offer OER in formats that do not require an advanced level of technical expertise to revise content.

Meaningful: Offer OER in meaningfully editable formats.

Source: Offer OER with source files that are accessible and editable.

Using the ALMS framework offers OER creators a structure guiding the openness of the content while ensuring access to adopters in a meaningful way. When creating work, consider sharing it in several formats that permits accessible classroom adoption.

This video from Iowa State University outlines five tips for OER creators:

Determine how your OER will meet your course needs
Check if you’ve already created something you can use as a base for your OER
Evaluate tools and determine where you will build your OER
Consider what license you will apply to your OER
Decide where and how you want to share your OER

Tools for Adapting and Creating OER

There are plenty of great resources and creation tools available to get you started. Take a look at the University of Iowa Libraries’ OER guide for links to these resources.

The simplest way to create or edit educational resources is to use familiar word processing tools, such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or LibreOffice. Those tools include most of the features needed for standard content, and the file can be easily exported as a PDF or printed. You can also migrate content to a platform like Pressbooks or Manifold after you’ve drafted it in a word processing tool. For mathematics and other technical fields, another option is to use the free and open source typesetting software LaTeX, which can produce complex mathematical expressions.

Another common way to create or edit educational resources is to create a website. This could be in the form of a blog, such as a WordPress site (the platform used for these training modules); a static website, such as pages hosted by your institution; or a wiki, using Wikia or another form of wiki software. Also, some OER repositories, including OER Commons, provide authoring tools, and there are proprietary authoring platforms including FastPencil and SoftChalk. Another common tool used by OER projects is PressBooks, which makes it easy to author and produce ebooks and other content.

For non-text OER, there are free and proprietary tools that can assist in creating and delivering content. Videos can be filmed on simple smartphones and published on platforms like YouTube. Images can be processed using free software such as Gimp. Audio can be recorded with tools like Audacity and published on platforms like Soundcloud. For developing online learning objects try free tools such as Powtoon, Adobe Spark and proprietary tools like Camtasia.

Beware that some authoring platforms on the market include restrictions on how the final product can be published or shared. Before beginning, it is important to ensure that you understand the terms of use and whether you will be able to move to a different platform.

Once you’ve created or adapted an OER, you will want to consider sharing it with other instructors or learners. Sharing your work is a personal choice and can be daunting, but it also can be rewarding. Sharing your work with others allows for increased use as well as opportunities for collaboration, enhancement, and improvement of your work. You can start small by sharing your work with others in your department or institution. Or, if you are ready, you can share it globally with other educators and students.

Whether you share it locally or globally as an OER, consider the following steps as your guide to sharing your work.

Step 1: Decide your terms of use

Do you wish to release your work under Creative Commons license or in the public domain? Please make sure to review the difference between these two copyright terms:

By releasing your work under a Creative Commons license, you retain ownership while allowing others to use your work (as long as they attribute it to you) without needing to ask permission of you directly.

By releasing your work in the public domain, your copyright ownership is waived. It is as if you are GIVING your work to the public as a gift. Users may still cite you when adopting your work, but they are not required to do so.

Module 3 has more information about licenses and public domain materials.

Step 2: Seek copyright clearance

Be sure that the work is eligible to be shared. To release your work with a CC license or in the public domain, your work should be cleared from all copyright issues. To do so, your work should be one or a combination of the following types:

Your original work
Built from open resource
Built from the public domain
Built from copyrighted work that you obtained permission to use, and distribute for the life of your openly licensed work, or
A combination of above works

Note: For any third-party materials, whether openly licensed or copyrighted, you must include a proper attribution that includes any licensing information from the original author. Review the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Resources for additional discussions on appropriate attribution of copyrighted materials.

If you must use any items that are copyrighted with all-rights reserved, please be sure to obtain written permission from the authors. Here is a sample permission request email that you can adapt for your purposes:

Hello Dr. [Name],

I am a faculty member with [department], [institution]. I am working on a project to design openly licensed instructional materials (OER) that can be taught face-to-face, hybrid and/or online. These resources will be freely available on the internet for anyone to copy, modify and use. One of the purposes of this project is to offer educational resources to regions where formal educational opportunities are scarce or expensive.

I would like to use a [chapter, excerpt, etc.] from your [book, article, blog post, etc.], [title, publisher, publication date].

I am seeking your permission to distribute this material as part of our course and include it in my public-facing OER. You will maintain your copyright but will be giving us permission to distribute this material for reuse as part of the teaching of this course and developing the OER. A full citation for the work will accompany it, as will a statement of copyright ownership.

Please contact me at [email address] or [phone number] with information about this request. Thank you for your time and attention.

Regards,

[Your name]

Step 3: Selecting a repository

When you’re ready to share your work, you can upload your OER to one or more repositories.

Module 5 has an extensive list of repositories, which we have also consolidated in the Appendix.

Knowledge Check

The main activity for this module is to create your own OER. This will allow you to apply all that you’ve learned in previous modules.

Choose one of the three prompts to create an open educational resource that you want to use in your class or to share with your faculty peers. This can be a blog, vlog, LibGuide page, a slide deck, a short video, a handout, or other. For this exercise, be sure your resource is licensed CC BY. Here are some topic ideas; feel free to create your own based on your needs. The goal is that you will use this OER!

Create an OER which reflects something you need for your course – start small, such as one teaching unit
Create an OER that informs faculty or students on the importance of active and engaged teaching
Create an OER on five (or so) tips you deem important for faculty to ensure they are following best practices regarding adopting, adapting, or creating OER

Remember, be sure your resource is properly marked with an open license and publicly accessible (public link sharing in Google Docs is acceptable if you’re not ready to make it broadly discoverable). If you’d like to adapt a resource that already exists, make sure to provide a link to the original version so we can see the improvements you made.

You may want to look at some examples of OER created and/or used in Iowa in the OER Commons Iowa Colleges & Universities Group.

Once you’ve created your OER, consider emailing the resource link to your colleagues or students for review.

Attributions

This module was adapted from the following resources:

Module 2: Understanding OER, ACC Learn OER by Carrie Gits, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Module 5: Developing and Delivering OER, The CCNY OER Workshop by the City College of New York, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit by Amanda Coolidge, Sue Doner, and Tara Robertson. Provided by BCCampus, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

“Centering Diversity and Inclusion” from The OER Starter Kit by Abbey K. Elder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Previous Module

Next Module