Library: Open Educational Resources (OER): OER In Action

What Are Other Institutions Doing with OER?

Affordable Learning Exchange at The Ohio State University
The Affordable Learning Exchange was created to help instructors take ownership of their courses and content. We are here to help navigate the waters of affordable resources and find creative solutions that promote students savings. --From the About page.
Open Educational Resources Adoptions
This wiki demonstrates just how many community colleges are using OER already. This list includes the course name, institution, and links to the OER they use.
Maricopa Millions
The Maricopa Community College District in Arizona has saved its students over $10 million in course materials by using low-cost or no-cost materials in its general education, high enrollment courses.
OER Degrees at Northern Virginia Community College
Northern Virginia Community College has developed course pathways where students are not required to purchase a single textbook to achieve an Associate Degree in several programs.

Library Guides

Numerous academic libraries have created materials to assist educators working with OER. Below are examples that contain useful information.

Ongoing Concerns

OER Funding
The Hewlett Foundation was an early investor in the creation and adoption of OER.
Awareness
OER are part of a larger global movement for Open Education. Open Education Week is an annual attempt to raise awareness of the components of the movement.

OER Creation and Editing Tools

Aesop Story Engine
Aesop Story Engine is a free collection of several components that can enrich your WordPress user experience. At the surface level, ASE let you insert images, videos, galleries, chapter navigation, animated effects and more to your posts quickly and easily.
Amara
Amara is home to an award winning subtitle editor that makes it easy to caption and translate video. Amara also hosts volunteer localization & accessibility communities, and offers professional tools and services for subtitles.
Fly Sketch
Fly Sketch allows users to draw and highlight on screenshots and export the result in a variety of formats.
H5P
Create interactive learning objects for your course. The objects' HTML code can be embedded into a website or Blackboard.
Microsoft Creative Commons Add-In
This add-in enables you to embed Creative Commons licenses directly into Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents.
OER Commons Open Author
Open Author resource builder makes it easy to combine text, pictures, sounds, files, and video, and save them as openly licensed educational resources — which can then be shared with friends, colleagues and educators from around the world.
Pressbooks
Pressbooks is easy-to-use book writing software that lets you create a book in all the formats you need to publish.
Creating Accessible PDFs
If you have a Columbus Metropolitan Library card, LinkedIn Learning Library gives you access to this and several other courses which teach you how to make your documents accessible to users with impairments.
Sigil E-book Editor
Sigil is free, open-source editing software for e-books in the EPUB format. As a cross-platform application, Sigil is distributed for the Windows, OS X and Linux platforms under the GNU GPL license. Sigil supports both WYSIWYG and code-based editing of EPUB files, as well as the import of HTML and plain text files.
EDpuzzle
EDpuzzle allows you to create lessons out of videos. You can add explanation audio to a video, insert assessments into video, and track student progress.

Creating OER and Licensing Resources

"Creating OER and Combining Licenses - Full" by Florida Virtual Campus , The Orange Grove - Florida's Open Educational Resource Repository is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Faculty Experiences

"How can OER help educators?" by The Council of Chief State School Officers is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Resources for Starting an OER Initiative

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
CCCOER is a growing consortium of community and technical colleges committed to expanding access to education and increasing student success through adoption of open educational policy, practices, and resources. Their activities support this dynamic community with information, resources, news, projects and building connections. Columbus State is a member of CCCOER.
OER: Reducing Costs and Enhancing Student Success
This presentation from Una Daly, Director of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER), presented to the Ohio Community College Association on April 13, 2017 explains the benefits of using OER to both students and faculty.

Helpful Implementation Resources

Vetting, selecting, and modifying OER can be a challenge. Here are some tools to help:

iRubric: Evaluating OER Rubric
This rubric offers questions to ask about the OER you are thinking of using.
Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know
This is a five-step guide for faculty, and those who support faculty, who want to modify an open textbook. Step-by-step instructions for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types are included.
BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit
The goal of the Accessibility Toolkit is to provide the resources needed so that each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, teaching assistant, etc. has the opportunity to create a truly open and accessible textbook.