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Lesson 2: Locating and Evaluating OER

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Lesson objectives

Upon completing this lesson, you should be able to:

  • Locate open educational resources
  • Assess whether an individual resource meets your needs

Finding open educational resources

Now that you know about potential problems to look out for, you're well prepared to start looking for open educational resources. Here are a few places to start:

  • The OER Commons

    The OER Commons is an excellent place to start, no matter what or who you teach. This site has a number of helpful filters - you can narrow your search by audience (student or instructor), grade level, type of material (video, handout, etc.), and more.

    If you are a K-12 teacher, you might appreciate the OER Commons Curated Collections. They have collections for the major standards used in schools today.

  • Ck-12

    Ck-12 offers open educational resources as well as technological tools to help personalize learning. Everything on the site appears to have a CC BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial) license.

  • Curriki

    Curriki also focuses on K-12 content. Curriki is more of a content curation site - in other words, they have compiled OER created by others. Most of the resources on this site are openly licensed. Make sure to click on the Information tab of the resource to see which license is being used.

  • Open Textbook Library

    This site acts as a search engine for college-level open textbooks. One of the biggest benefits of this site is that it contains reviews from faculty who have read or adopted these textbooks.

  • OpenLearn

    An initiative of the well-known Open University in the UK, OpenLearn has openly licensed content on a wide variety of subjects, and in a wide variety of formats.

Does this OER meet your needs?

If your curiosity hasn't gotten the better of you, take some time now to look for an OER that might fit your instructional needs.

After you've found one, take a few moments to assess the OER. We recommend you answer these questions in a Word document, a Google document, or a piece of paper.

  • Is the resource accessible?

    Most OER are online, so it's important that they be accessible. The resource should be free of significant interface issues, such as navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader or screen-reading software.

  • Is the resource current?

    The resource should be up-to-date, but not in a way that will quickly make it obsolete within a short period of time. The resource should be written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement. This is especially true if you think you may be modifying the resource in the future.

  • Is the resource written and organized clearly?

    The resource should be written in lucid, accessible prose, and provide adequate context for any jargon/technical terminology used. The information in the resource should be presented in a logical, clear fashion.

  • Is the resource consistent?

    The resource should be internally consistent in terms of terminology and structure.

  • Is the resource culturally relevant?

    The resource should not be culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. Whenever possible, resources should make use of examples that are inclusive, including (but not limited to) a variety of races, ethnicities, gender identities, religions, and more.

  • Is the resource accurate and free of errors?

    Obviously, you don't want to use a resource that's incorrect. However, be sure to watch out for grammatical errors, especially egregious and confusing ones!


For larger or more comprehensive resources, like unit plans or textbooks:

  • Is the resource comprehensive?

    The resource should cover all areas and/or ideas of the subject appropriately, and provide an effective index and/or glossary if applicable.

  • Is the resource sufficiently 'chunkable'?

    The resource should be easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course (i.e., enormous blocks of text without subheadings should be avoided).


Note: the above text was adapted from Evaluating OERs [1], used with permission under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

A special note for K-12 teachers

The OER Commons has recently partnered with Achieve, an organization focused on preparing students for careers and college. Achieve developed a set of rubrics to help evaluate whether an OER aligns with standards [2]. Many items in the OER Commons indicate which standard they align with, and they will include an average score for each of the Achieve rubric.

These rubric are good things to consider when you're evaluating an OER. If you sign up for your own account in the OER Commons, you can also rate the resource based on these rubric, and help other teachers who find that resource!

Here are the general areas the rubrics address [2]:

  • Degree of Alignment
  • Quality of Explanation of the Subject Matter
  • Utility of Materials Designed to Support Teaching
  • Quality of Assessments
  • Quality of Technological Interactivity
  • Quality of Instructional and Practice Exercises
  • Opportunities for Deeper Learning

Ready to move on?

Yes! Take me to Unit 3!

References & Resources

[1] Harris, L. (2016.) Evaluating OERs. Retrieved from http://libraryguides.oswego.edu/oer/evaluation

[2] Achieve. (2011). Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects. Retrieved from https://www.achieve.org/files/AchieveOERRubrics_1.pdf


 

This mini-course was created by Laura Harris. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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