Open Educational Resources: Evaluating OERs
As the number of OERs increase, choosing one to use can be difficult. The following criteria can be used to help assess OERs for suitability:
Relevance
- Is the content relevant to the course or module?
- Is the content presented at a reading level appropriate for the course or module?
- Is the content useful for learners and teachers?
- Will the content help meet course or module objectives?
Accuracy
- Is the content, based on your knowledge and that of your peers, accurate?
- Is the content up-to-date?
- Are there any omissions or errors in the content?
Adaptabiity
- Is the resource licenced for adaptation and modification?
- Is the resource formatted for easy modification (e.g..html, instead of pdf)?
- Is the resource written or arranged in such a way that it will be easy to amend or update?
Quality
- Does the content flow well?
- Has the resource been through any kind of copy-editing process and is free from factual, grammatical or typographic errors?
- is the resource internally consistent in terms of terminology
- Is the interface easy to navigate?
- Is the resource well-presented and designed?
- For audio resources, is the sound quality good?
- For video resources, are the audio and video quality good?
Accessibility
- Has a transcript been provided for audio resources?
- Are there subtitles provided for video resources?
- Do graphics come with descriptions?
Origins
- Who created the resource?
- What kind of expertise or qualifications do they have?
- Where is the resource hosted?
- What kind of reputation do they have?
- Does the hosting site perform any quality control?
- Does the resource have any reviews?
See the Links and Resources page for other lists. Also, have a look at the Evaluating Sources section.You can use some of the criteria for evaluating information sources to assess OERs
