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OER

Open and Affordable Educational Resources

Self Publishing/ Creating

  • A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students (from the Open Textbook Network)
    A handbook for faculty interested in practicing open pedagogy by involving students in the making of open textbooks, ancillary materials, or other Open Educational Resources. This is a first edition, compiled by Rebus Community, and we welcome feedback and ideas to expand the text.

  • Authoring Open Textbooks by the Open Textbook Network
    This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools.
  • Case Study from an Open Textbook Author
  • 80 Open Educational Resources tools
  • Guide to Tools and Resources for OER Authors from the Open Access Textbooks project
    A guide to authoring tools focusing on whether tools are free, allow collaboration, can create multiple kinds of outputs, and other important logistical questions.
     
  • SUNY Empire Authoring Tools Guide
    A clearinghouse of OER, including learning object repositories, open course repositories, scholarly repositories, open textbooks, and information about open learning/education in general
 

Creating OER

Creating OER

Creating an OER is similar to authoring any other document, except that you are assigning that content an open license which usually allows for its free use and re-purposing by others. 

Things to consider:

  • What license will you assign to your OER? Using a Creative Commons License will provide you with the legal framework to share your OER.
  • How will you make your OER accessible to all students? We recommend the Open Education Consortium's guide to address accessibility issues. 
  • Where will you create and host your OER?  You can use your own Google Drive or follow the following steps
    • Create your content
    • Get it approved/verified by your faculty 
    • Send an email to learningcommons@kean.edu and cc your faculty member who approved it
    • Learning Commons will upload to Digital Commons and provide you a link to be shared
  • How will you share your OER? Once you've created your OER, you may want to share it across many directories and repositories for maximum visibility. Consider submitting your work to MERLOT, OER Commons, or the Open Textbook Library.