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
- A course on the use, re-use, and distribution of OERS
Adoption Guide
- A guide to adopting OERs for your own use.
BCCampus OpenEd: Modifying an Open Textbook
- Detailed instructions on how to adapt an open textbook for your own use
File Format Editability
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
5 of Our Favorite Video Editing Software Programs in 2024 (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. Not offically updated since 2007 so GIMP may be a better option.
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
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.
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.
