Open Educational Resources: Using

For many courses, you may be able to find existing OER resources ready to adopt and use for your class without little or no modification.

When you've adopted an OER, here's what you need to do:

• Make sure your course is marked as no-cost/low-cost
• Work with the print shop and bookstore to offer optional printed copies of your open materials. See "Print Copies of Open Resources" below.
• Contact Accessible Ed & Disability Resources to request an an accessibility evaluation of the materials or to request technical assistance. You can call 971-722-TECH (971-722-8324) or email access-tech-group@pcc.edu
• Submit your adoption to the Open Oregon Educational resources page.

Not required but a nice bonus:

• Consider notifying your SAC chairs as well as your division deans.
• Talk to your colleagues about your OER experiences. Consider presenting to your SAC.
• Contact oer@pcc.edu and let us know!

Currently, PCC is set up to offer printed copies of open resources as course packets, but since these items are flexibly copyrighted, students do not pay for royalties- only production costs.  Some funding for OER printing is available through the OER Steering Committee, contact us for details.

1. Email the Print Center to request a file number at printcen@pcc.edu
2. Submit your OER adoption to the PCC Bookstore through the normal adoption process. 
   Follow the instructions on the "Faculty" section of the Bookstore website.  Any questions about this part of the process can be directed to Sara Bachenberg, Buyer, College Bookstore Operations. sara.bachenberg@pcc.edu, 971-722-4313.
3. Place an online order with the Print Center to submit your content. Any questions regarding this part of the process can be directed to Angie Bulsiewicz, Print Center Production Scheduler, angela.hooper@pcc.edu, 971-722-4670.
4. Students go to the bookstore to buy the printed copy. The cost to students will be print shop costs plus ~23% bookstore markup.
5. As soon as you can message enrolled students, let them know that they have free online access to your text and that they can choose to print segments out. The complete, printed copy in the bookstore is an optional purchase.

Platforms & Tools:

• Pressbooks – authoring and publishing platform for OER.  Free and priced options are available.  Contact oer@pcc.edu if you're interested in using Pressbooks.

• LibreTexts – open authoring platform for textbooks, simulations, and ancillary course materials

• OER Commons Open Author – free open authoring tool within the OER Commons repository that allows the creation and adaptation of OER.  Use Module Builder to create interactive content or Open Author to create course materials using text, files, images, etc. You will be prompted to set up an account to use this platform.

• Manifold - publishing platform that converts existing files into responsive online texts that can be annotated and augmented with media

• Google Drive - Drive allows you to create web-hosted documents, presentations, forms etc. Each document can be linked to from D2L and centrally maintained (i.e. you can update the google document and it will automatically update within D2L). This can be useful especially if you are using the same material for multiple classes.

• H5P -an open-source content authoring and publishing platform used to create interactive and rich content.

• Softchalk - Can be used to create interactive tutorials and mash up text/media. Resource/help page

For support choosing or using a tool or platform to create, publish, or host your OER, don't hesitate to reach out to oer@pcc.edu or contact Instructional Support

One of the great advantages of OER is your ability to modify existing OER to fit specific learning outcomes and needs of your students.  You might, for example, want to add local or regional examples to an OER or adapt content to match your teaching style and/or the learning needs of the students in your class.  You might want to enrich the content with videos or relevant images, or adapt examples to reflect the backgrounds and experiences of your students. 

Some of the larger OER platforms provide tools to help you modify and remix content from within their sites but most smaller DIY OERs will require you to puzzle that out yourself.  Sometimes this is straightforward but it often includes juggling multiple files and file types and making sure that all the Creative Commons licenses are compatible. 

• The book, "Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know" helps guide you through remixing multiple works.
• Creative Commons License Compatibility page can help you determine whether there will be compatibility issues between licenses.
• Always make sure you're keeping track of copyright issues and giving proper attribution.  Our page on licensing and attribution can help you with this.

While some OER platforms have built in peer review processes and many don't.  Here are some resources that can help you evaluate OER you may wish to use:

• BCcampus Faculty Guide for Evaluating OERs
• Achieve's Rubric for Evaluating OERs
• R Campus Assessment Rubric with questions to ask about the OER you are thinking of using

PCC Guide to Web Accessibility for Online Classes - Step by step guides to making course materials accessible, contact information for support at PCC, and a link to PCC's Web Accessibility Handbook. 

BC Campus OpenEd Accessibility Toolkit - Addresses the needs of users with limited vision or other disabilities in accessing your OER.

Skills Commons Accessibility Guidelines - Helpful tools and rigorous guidelines to ensure accessibility. Includes instructions for evaluating your content and creating accessible documents (.doc, .pdf, .ppt). 

Protocol for Curating Accessible OER - detailed "how to's" for Microsoft and Google Docs users, from the National Center of Accessible Educational Materials (published May 2021). 

Activity: Adapting Resources for Inclusion - This worksheet walks you through a few ways you can make the OER in your course more inclusive for your students.

Assessing Visual Materials for Diversity & Inclusivity - This resource is a modification of the Washington Models for the Evaluation of Bias Content in Instructional Materials (2009) that is made available through OER Commons under a public domain license. This resource attempts to both update the content with more contemporary vocabulary and also to narrow the scope to evaluating still images as they are found online. It was developed as a secondary project while working on a BranchED OER grant during summer 2020. It includes an attached rubric adapted from the Washington Model (2009).

The OER Starter Kit Workbook: Accessibility and Usability 

Trans inclusion in OER - This resource is a guide on how to make OER more inclusive and representative of trans and gender diverse people. It is intended to be easily incorporated into a scholarly communications course, while also being valuable to faculty and others interested in learning about the topic and how to make changes to their own course materials.

Indigenous Open Educational Resources: Respectfully Uplifting Community Voices Webinar - Open education is grounded in Western understandings of ownership, protocol, and accessibility. Often open education has a goal of making all knowledges available for all peoples. Within Canadian copyright law is tension with Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. The open education community must carefully consider Indigenous knowledges and self-determination, which are deeply rooted in community-defined ethics and protocols and do not fit into ordinary academic contexts. This session will explore some of the concerns around open educational resources (OER) and Indigenous knowledges while using Indigenous worldviews to better understand how Indigenous knowledges can be respectfully incorporated into OER.

Content in this box is lightly modified from "Textbook Affordability and Open Educational Resources (OER)" by Justine Munds/Clackamas Community College, which is licensed under CC BY