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Open Educational Resources (OER/ZTC)

This guide provides information about OER and a basic primer about copyright and fair use for instruction

Evaluation of OER Resources

Criteria for Evaluating OER

  • Accuracy / Quality of Content 
  • Relevance
  • Production Quality
  • Accessibility
  • Interactivity
  • Cultural Relevance & Sensitivity
  • Licensing
  • Ease of Adaptability

Source: "Selection Criteria & Evaluation of OER." Austin Community College Library.

Sample Rubrics & Evaluation Tools

Source: "Open Educational Resources (OER): Evaluate OER." University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University Library.

Learn More

Learn More About OER

The resources below were compiled by the ASCCC OER Initiative and are intended to provide a general overview of the use of OER. Resources with a focus on a particular topic, such as accessibility, can be found elsewhere in the Canvas course. Direct access to the ASCCC OER Initiative in Canvas: https://tinyurl.com/ASCCC-OERI.

  1. Check your RCCD canvas account.There is a Flex credit approved shell entitled Zero Textbook Cost Pathways: OER & Equity (worth 3 hours):
    • RCCD canvas OER shell thumnail
  3. Butte College offers a course titled "Introduction to Open Educational Resources" in Canvas. Although originally designed to be a seminar-online hybrid, the course is now available as a self-paced online course.
  4. CSU Channel Islands offers a 5-day OER "bootcamp" in Canvas. "This 5-Day Workout is intended to engage you for 20 minutes per day. The focus is exploration of open educational resources in higher education."
  5. Lumen Learning's Adopting Open Educational Resources in the Classroom "provides faculty with an introduction to the laws that influence the use, re-use, and distribution of content they may want to use in a course. Activities include finding openly licensed content for use in a class and publishing openly licensed works created by faculty. At the end of the course, students will have openly licensed content that will be ready for use in a course."
  6. Maricopa's OER Faculty Workshop is a self-paced workshop in Canvas. It consists of two parts:
    • Part 1: The Easy Way to Create, License, and Share Free Materials
    • Part 2: Exploring the Possibilities of Open Educational Resources
  7. The Open University offers a self-paced course titled "Becoming an open educator" (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. As explained in the course site:
  8. Open Washington's "How to use Open Educational Resources". is a self-paced workshop that covers licensing, finding OER, accessibility, and more.
  9. University of Texas at Arlington's "Introduction to Open Education" is an EdX MOOC that provides students with an opportunity to "learn about open education and how it can significantly reduce costs, increase agency and transparency, and improve learning outcomes." Resources from this MOOC are available for review and use at the OpenEd MOOC Archive.

Direct access to the ASCCC OER Initiative in Canvas: https://tinyurl.com/ASCCC-OERI.