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OER: Adopt, Adapt, Create: Create

Create

 

Creating OER might be an option if the content that you need doesn't already exist. An original creation can be developed in various formats: textbooks, lab manuals, handouts, videos and more.

The video outlines 5 tips for creators:

  1. Determine how your OER will meet your course needs
  2. Check if you've already created something you can use as a base for your OER
  3. Evaluate tools and determine where you will build your OER
  4. Consider what license you will apply to your OER
  5. Decide where and how you want to share your OER

The ALMS Framework

For work to be truly “open” and allow the 5R permissions, the work should be meaningfully accessible and editable. How can you ensure adopters can easily reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain the work? The ALMS framework, established by Hilton, Wiley, Stein, and Johnson (2010), highlights the vital importance of offering source files and creating work in easily adoptable formats.

      • ACCESS: Offer in a format that can be easily edited with freely accessible tools

      • LEVEL: Format should not require advanced technical expertise to revise content

      • MEANINGFUL: Offer in an editable format

      • SOURCE: Source file that is accessible and editable

Using the ALMS framework offers OER creators a structure guiding the openness of the content while ensuring access to adopters in a meaningful way. When creating work, consider sharing it in several formats that permits accessible classroom adoption: MS Word, PDF, and Google doc.

Resources for Customizing Texts

There are low tech, medium tech, and high tech tools and authoring platforms available to adapt or create your OER. You can use commonly known tools such as Word or Google Docs. You can also use institutional tools such as Canvas and Adobe Express(Spark). Below are some other authoring tools that are available totally free or with limited basic, free service:

LibreText
An easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER). It is highly collaborative, has 3D capabilities, multimedia including videos and simulations, student tracking and assessment, an integrated annotation infrastructure and can be embedded into Blackboard.

libretexts

Open Author
Developed by OER Commons, this source has various tools for creating OER from scratch or harnessing existing open content to encourage students to solve specific tasks. OER Commons’ authoring platform, Open Author, can be used either to design and create individual resources or to lay out the structure of an open textbook.

OER Commons

Pressbooks
Features include the ability to create and remix, but also features other tools for building hypotheses, web annotations, and mathematical tools for equations and formulas, and tools for advanced text formatting.

pressbooks