OER: Adopt, Adapt, Create: In the Classroom

Did you know that most OERs have supportive materials? Many OER books come with PowerPoint slides, test banks and practice problems to support students and faculty. All this content is digital, allowing us to shed the weight and the cost of the bulky textbook without losing the features we have come to expect from publishers. These supportive materials allow OERs to be used flexibly in the classroom.

Faculty can choose to dive in and adopt an entire textbook or start out simple and design a single lesson around an open resource. If you are looking to start with OERs on a small scale, consider redesigning a lesson. This is a great option if you are looking for new activities to engage students in the classroom and want to see how OER use will benefit students. Faculty members can take a few simple steps to align learning outcomes and assessment to OER resources that best fit the needs of the students. This process is referred to as backwards design. Take your traditional lesson planning to the next level using backwards design and integrating with OER resources!

Some questions to ask yourself:

• In what file format is the resource currently available? In what format/s do you need/want your version to be available? Think of what students prefer.
• How much content needs to be changed: a few chapters, a few sentences (images, graphs, etc.)? Keep it simple, you may not be able to change/remix everything you want the first go around.
• Do any of the illustrations, graphs, charts or video links need to be changed? If so you will need tools beyond ones that modify text.