6 Finding and Evaluating OER

Teachers have always created and shared teaching materials, though finding and reusing others’ work is not always simple.^[1] This chapter will teach you how to find free and openly licensed teaching resources that already exist and adapt them for use in your own classrooms.

Personal Reflection: Why It Matters to You

Where do you currently find your learning resources? Do you seek open alternatives for materials you currently use? How do you evaluate your existing learning resources, and how can you apply those measures to openly licensed content?^[2]

Once you identify the learning resources you currently use, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this resource available to all of my learners at no cost?
• Can my learners and I keep a copy of this resource forever?
• Does my class have the legal rights to fix errors, update old or inaccurate content, improve the work, and share it with other educators around the world?
• Can my learners contribute to and improve our learning resources as part of their course work?

If the answer to these questions is “No” – you’re likely using learning resources that don’t provide the legal permissions you and your learners need to do what you want to do. Conversely, if you answered “Yes” to all of the questions – you are likely using OER.

How to Find Resources

Not everything on the internet is OER, and some works labeled as “open” may not have the legal permissions to exercise the 5Rs. So how do you recognize OER and how do you choose which OER will work best in your class? Remember that for a resource to be an OER it has to be available to everyone at no cost and be in the public domain or under an open license.

Finding the resources you want to use is the first step to bringing OER into your classroom. Discovery is one of the primary barriers to educators using OER. Fortunately, there are many established ways to search for OER.

First, for a short introduction on how to find OER, watch this video:

OER Repositories and Search Tools

There are many websites that host large collections of OER (e.g., Wikimedia Commons).

There are hundreds of online platforms on which you can share your openly licensed content. Here are a few of the largest, most often used OER search tools and repositories:

• Open Textbook Library
• OASIS Metafinder
• OER Commons

Try searching several different platforms and meta-search tools to find the greatest number of results to choose from.

If you don’t know where to start, you can do a general OER search using Google Advanced Search and filtering your results by “Usage Rights” in Advanced search.

For a more guided approach through the OER searching process, download a copy of our OER Treasure Hunt Worksheet in Google Docs.

Listservs and Google Groups

Open educators often ask each other for help when looking for OER on email listservs and Google Groups. Here are a few you might want to join:

• SPARC LibOER
• Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) Google Group
• Iowa OER Google Group
• Open Textbook Network Google Group

Openly Licensed Images

As you begin to use and create OER, remember that the images you use should be free and openly licensed, as well. Here are some sources you might consider for openly licensed images:

• Creative Commons CC Search
• Library of Congress Flickr Account
• WOC in Tech Flickr
• The Met Collection
• Unsplash
• The Noun Project
• Nappy: Beautifully Diverse Stock Photos

Evaluating Sources

Just like any other teaching resources, you need to carefully evaluate the OER you plan on using in your teaching. Educators who are new to OER may have concerns about quality because OER are available for free and may have been remixed by other educators. The process of using and evaluating OER is not that different from evaluating traditional all-rights-reserved copyright resources. Whether education materials are openly licensed or closed, you are the best judge of quality because you know what your learners need and what your curriculum demands.

Subject specialists (educators and librarians) assess the quality and suitability of learning resources, often along the following criteria^[3]:

• Comprehensiveness—Does it look like it covers the topic thoroughly and completely?
• Accuracy—Do you notice any errors or inaccuracies?
• Relevance—Does it fit your objectives?
• Longevity—Will this resource remain relevant for a sufficient period of time?
• Clarity—Will it be readable and easy to understand for your students?
• Consistency—Does the OER have a unified style, perspective, and content?
• Modularity—Can you easily change the order of chapters or sections, or delete sections entirely, and still have the work make sense?
• Organization/Structure/Flow—Is the OER organized well into sections, headings, and chapters? Does the structure assist with accessibility? Does the content follow a logical progression?
• Interface—How easy is the resource to use and navigate?
• Grammatical Errors—Does the work seem like it was proofread?
• Cultural Relevance—Who is this work speaking to? Who is it leaving out?

Remember, OER are not “low quality” just because they are free. As the SPARC OER Mythbusting Guide points out:

• In this increasingly digital and internet connected world, the old adage of “you get what you pay for” is growing outdated. New models are developing across all aspects of society that dramatically reduce or eliminate costs to users, and this kind of innovation has spread to education resources.
• OER publishers have worked to ensure the quality of their resources. Many open textbooks are created within rigorous editorial and peer-review guidelines, and many OER repositories allow faculty to review (and see others’ reviews of) the material. There is also a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that OER can be both free of cost and high quality—and more importantly, support positive student learning outcomes.

Final remarks

We live in a world of information abundance, and an increasing percentage of our digital knowledge is openly licensed. Finding the right open resources that fit the needs of your learning spaces and your learners can be a challenge. One of the major motivations for using OER is the ability to revise, remix, and share these works to best suit the needs of your learners. Search engines, OER repositories and platform services with built-in tools for using Creative Commons licenses help, but finding the right OER still takes time.