Open Educational Resources - General

Becoming an Open Educator

• Free online course aimed at anyone curious about how free and open might change their approach to teaching

EU Science Hub: Open Education

• The website of the EU's science and knowledge service. This is a section on open education and OERs

Fixing the Broken Textbook Market:

• National survey of US college students showing why OER adoption is important

An Introduction to Open Educational Resources

• A free course from the Open University that aims to give a better understanding of the choices practitioners make about applying technology to their teaching,the advantages of using OERs and their benefits to learners 

The Future of Open Education

• TED Talk from Dr. David Wiley, Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University

Office Hours

• A series of webinars from the Rebus Community and the Open Education Network on OER topics

Open Education: Design and Policy Considerations

• Book chapter discussing the use of open education practices

Participant Experiences and Financial Impacts: Findings from Year 2 of Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree Initiative

• A 2018 report on an OER initiative intended to help colleges reduce the financial burden on students and improve curriculum and pedagogy by developing courses using free and openly licensed instructional materials.

Understanding OER

• Lumen Learning course  exploring the definitions, concepts, and effective practices related to open educational resources

UNESCO Recommendations on Open Educational Resources

• Adopted by UNESCO's general;conference in 2019, this recommendation seeks to build the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute Open Educational Resources; developing supportive policy; encouraging quality resources that are also inclusive and equitable; and nurturing the creation of sustainable models

Benefits

Open Education Group: The Review Project

• A bibliography of all known empirical research on the impacts of OER adoption. Periodically updated with new articles

Copyright and Licencing

Best Practices for Attribution

• Using CC-licenced material requires following the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here are some good and bad examples of attribution

CC0 FAQ

• A comprehensive set of questions and answers on use of CC0 licences from the Creative Commons wiki

Creative Commons

• A non-profit organisation and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share

Creative Commons Licences

• A series of licences that rights holders can use to decide how their work is shared

Creative Commons Wiki

• The purpose of this wiki is to provide information about Creative Commons and CC licences

How to Choose an Open Licence

• Useful guide from the National Forum for Teaching and Learning, providing advice on choosing an open licence to use.

An Introduction to Creative Commons Licences

• Tutorial on CC licences with a quiz to test understanding and use of CC licences

Irish Copyright Licencing Agency

• A licensing body as defined by Section 149 of the Copyright & Related Rights Act, 2000 that issues licences for the re-use of print and digital works, permitting copying within certain rules from a wide repertoire of Irish and overseas publications.

National Forum Open Licensing Toolkit

•  Practical information for anyone wishing to use open educational resources

Adoption and Adaptation

Adopting Open Educational Resources in the Classroom

• Another Lumen course, this on the use, re-use, and distribution of OERS

Adoption Guide

• A guide to adopting OERs for your own use.

Best Practices for Attribution

• A guide from the Creative Commons guide

BCCampus OpenEd: Modifying an Open Textbook

• Detailed instructions on how to adapt an open textbook for your own use

File Format Editability

• From Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know, this is a table of file format, their relative editability and recommnended software for editing.

A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students

• A handbook for those interested in involving learners in the creation of OERs

Open Attribution Builder

• A web tool to help users of Creative Commons licenced material to properly attribute it.

Open Textbook Adoption Worksheet

• A little dated but a useful 5-step process to adopting an open textbook for use.

 

Creating - Guides

BCcampus Adaptation Guide

• A practical reference about how to customise — or adapt — an open textbook so that it better fits your needs

BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide

• A guide to preparing, planning, writing, publishing and maintaining an open textbook

The OER Starter Kit

• Created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources and aimed at those new to OERs

The OER Starter Kit Workbook

• A remix of the OER Starter Kit to include worksheets to help instructors practice the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create OERs

The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (so far)

• Written to equip all those who want to publish open textbooks with the resources they need

Creating - Tools

The 9 Best Open Source Video Editors of 2021 (Lifewire)

• Lifewire is a decent technology review site - this is their selection of the best open-source video editing software available

The 10 Best Voice Recorder Apps for Android (Android Authority)

• Some of the best voice recorder apps for Android

The 10 Best Voice Recorder Apps for iPhones (Rev)

• Rev is a transcription service and include their own voice recording app in this list (spoiler it's their number 1 recommendation)

Amara

• Freemium video subtitling platform

Audacity

•  Open-source digital audio editor and recording application software

Audacity Manual

• A comprehensive users' manual with tutorials  that provide step-by-step instructions for performing common tasks in Audacity.

GIMP

• An open source image editor

GIMPshop

• A modification of GIMPthat replicates the look and the feel of Adobe Photoshop

Inkscape

• Vector graphic creator and editor which can also be used to edit PDFs

Libre Office

• Open-source office software suite with the same kind of software as that offered by Microsoft Ofiice

OER Commons Open Author

• An online tool for creating OERs. Requires free registration

OpenShot

• Very good open-source video editor, perhaps not quite as good as ShotCut but may be easier to use

PressBooks

• An open source content management system for creating books

PubPub

• An open source collaborative publishing platform

Screencast-O-Matic

• Freemium screen recording platform

ShotCut

• Very good open-source video editor

Evaluating

iRubric: Evaluating OER rubric

• A customisable (site account required) and comprehensive rubric for assessing OERs

List of Criteria for Evaluating OER - Affordable Learning Georgia

• Another.list of criteria for assessing OERs

Open Education Resource Repository (OERR) Rubric

• Rubric developed by the BC Open Education Librarian Group to evaluate open education resource repositories

Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER )Objects

•  A comprehensive set of rubrics to rate the potential effectiveness of a particular OER object in a learning environment

Accessibility

A11Y - Color Blindness Empathy Test

• Emulates 8 types of color blindness, plus greyscale to check the contrast of your website
  • Chrome browser add-on
  • Firefox browser add-on

Accessible vs. Inaccessible - Can you Hear the Difference?

• A video showing the difference that using accessibility good practice makes to screen reading software.

Accessibility Thrives

• A nice infographic from Queen's University Belfast Centre for Educational Development

AHEAD - Accessibility Resources and Know-How (ARK)

• AHEAD is an independent non-profit organisation working to create inclusive environments in education and employment for people with disabilities. ARK provides practical resources and know-how to support staff to be more accessible in their roles, and supports colleges and centres to consider a whole institution approach to digital accessibility, meet their legal obligations, boost accessibility compliance, and provide a better digital experience for all.

AHEAD - Creating Accessible Documents

• AHEAD's advice on creating accessible electronic documents..

BCcampus Open Education Accessibility Toolkit

• Guide to key concepts and best practices in creating accessible OERs

Choosing an Accessible Font

• Recite Me are a company who create assistive technology.. This is their useful guide to accessibility and font selection 

Colour Contrast Checker

• A WebAIM (below) tool for checking the contrast between your background and foreground colours

Curating OER - Accessibility Checklist

• A checklist of accessibility issues, part of the College Libraries Ontario OER Toolkit.

Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test Tool

• Test the readability of your web pages with this free online tool

Flexible Learning for Open Education (FLOE)

• FLOE applies inclusive design to OER projects to help create adaptable and personalisable educational resources that can accommodate a diversity of learning styles and individual needs

Get Your Documents Readability and Level Statistics

• How to calculate your Microsoft Word document's readability

How to Write in Plain English

• A guide from the Plain English Campaign

Understanding Document Accessibility

• Learn how to create accessible word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentation slides, PDFs and other formats

Making Audio and Video Media Accessible

• This W3C (below) resource explains how to make media accessible,

Microsoft Accessibility video training

• Learn about key improvements in Office that make it more accessible. Includes videos on
  • Excel
  • Outlook
  • PowerPoint
  • Word

Social Visual Alt Text

• This  browser extension is designed for individuals who are interested in viewing the alt text applied to images without the need to inspect each image or use a screen reader. It makes the alt text on social media posts visible to sighted users on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
  • Chrome
  • Firefox

  W3C Web Accessibility Tutorials

• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web. This a collection of their tutorials on how to make web pages more accessible and the same criteria can then help inform accessibility in other content

WAVE Web Accessibility Tool

• Created by WebAIM (below), this is a suite of evaluation tools for helping make web pages more accessible

WebAIM

• Web Accessibility In Mind is a non-profit organization based at the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University who offer a number of web accessibility products and services .

Writing Alt-Text for Accessibility; Guidelines and Examples

• A guide fron Deque, a company working on digital accessibility

Youtube Video Captioning

• Four videos from deaf YouTuber Jessica Kellgren-Fozard on the importance of captioning, how to caption, and captioning best practices.