Click on the OER Repository Name to take you to their website.

OER Repositories

	ASCCC OERI	OER Collections for the California Community Colleges, organized by discipline, CSU general education requirements, Transfer Model Curricula, and C-ID.
	Cool4Ed	A collection of Course Materials Showcases where faculty, staff, and students can find free and open educational resources.
	LibreTexts	LibreTexts is the adaptable, user-friendly open education resource platform that educators trust for creating, customizing, and sharing accessible, interactive textbooks, adaptive homework, and ancillary materials.
	MERLOT	The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
	OER Commons	OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
	Open Textbook Library	Open textbooks are licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted. Download, edit and distribute them at no cost.
	OpenStax	OpenStax offers free college textbooks for all types of students, making education accessible & affordable for everyone.
	Pressbooks	Pressbooks Directory is a free, searchable catalog that includes open access books published by organizations Pressbooks.
	Other OER Repositories and Collections	A listing of various OER Repositories.
	Madera OER by Pathways	OER Textbook Repository based on Guided Pathways.

Getting Started

Review the OER Starter Kit. 

The following OER production framework depicts the major steps that OER adoptions typically go through:

Research Phase

At this step, you should ask yourself a few key questions to gauge your OER knowledge and skills before taking on a project. Have you explored OER content in your subject area? Have you been through any previous training for work with OER in the past? Contact the OER Lead on campus to receive any training you might be lacking for working with open content.

Pre-production phase

This phase involves the curation of existing resources that may be applicable to the OER adoption and planning out the general design of the project. No new content should be adapted in this step, but a skeleton outline and other time-and-task-based project management documents should be prepared. Getting a copy of your course outline of record to help ensure that you will meet the course objective, content outline and student learning outcomes will help in this process.

Design phase

This step is the last planning phase before work on the actual OER content begins. For projects adapting OER as-is, this may be the final step apart from preparing instructional documents. During this phase, project outlines and skeleton documents are fleshed out, and existing OER are fit into places where they are believed to be applicable. Any visual/graphic design work and processes that require assistance should be consulted on by either the OER Lead on campus or the Instructional Designer.

Development phase

This phase is where the most time is spent on OER projects that require building new materials. Existing OER that are being adapted or modified go through revision and review in a closed loop until they are in a place where they require only minor changes or copyedits. Checks for intellectual property (which CC license is on the content, and have we appropriately attributed everything?) are done, as well as checks for accessibility (is content formatted semantically, do images include alt-text, etc)?

Content here is typically drafted in Word or another rich content editor (google doc, OpenOffice).

Publication phase

The final phase involves publishing and sharing the content that has been created. This includes creating export versions, archiving editable files for instructors who might wish to edit your work (.doc, .xml, etc), and depositing any ancillary materials such as syllabi or lesson plans in the Canvas OER shell. The new adapted or original OER content is then disseminated to learners and shared with the open community.

Evaluation Criteria

Because OERs may vary in quality, it is important for instructors to carefully evaluate them before posting them in their classroom. The criteria include: 

• Authority:  Is it clear who developed and wrote the material? Are his or her qualifications for creating the material clearly stated?
• Accuracy:  Are there errors or omissions visible?
• Objectivity:  Is any type of bias present?
• Currency:  Is the resource up-to-date and/or is a creation or update date visible?
• Coverage:  Does it address the topic at hand sufficiently to add value to the class?

Consider taking these steps to evaluate OER, or follow the process you typically use to evaluate textbooks and other course materials.

1. Does this OER cover the content you'd like to present to your students for this course or module?
2. Is the content appropriate for your students? Is it too challenging? Not challenging enough?
3. How can you use the content? What are the restrictions and requirements outlined in the license the resource is under?
4. Based on what's permissible, how do you plan to use the content? Can portions be remixed with other content, or enhanced with supplemental material?
5. How do the open resources you are collecting align with learning objectives and lessons?

ADA Compliance

Instructors planning to use OERs in their courses should also keep in mind that the OERs should comply with federal and state accessibility requirements.  A checklist for compliance with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act can be found at WebAIM.

Adapted from: University of Maryland University College. (2018). Open educational resources: Considerations for using OERs.

Licensing

Instructors who are creating content must ensure that they are following the necessary licensing guidelines for the content being created. 

Canvas Resource Shells

• OER Basics
• OER Accessibility

Training Opportunities

• ASCCC OERI Self-Paced Courses
• CELA Course through Reedley College (Noncredit course offered through Reedley College with graduate-level units available through FPU - may be eligible for Salary Class Advancement).  Phone: 559-494-3011 Email: rc.outreach@reedleycollege.edu Monday - Friday: 8:00 am - 5:00pm.

OER Basics and Accessibility course is offered periodically at Madera Community College and faculty may be eligible for compensation. For additional information, please email Antoniette Aizon.

Below are the current OER / ZTC Projects

The current projects are being funded by State Center Community College District ZTC Block Grant, California Community College Chancellor's Office ZTC Acceleration Grant and ZTC Implementation Grant. These projects will be available for dissemination via Canvas. For more information, please email Antoniette Aizon .   

More funding will be available for future projects. Please stay tuned.

The reduction in costs for students is a major benefit of OERs but is not the only one. OER course materials are much more flexible than commercial textbooks, allowing the instructor to customize the materials to meet their specific student learning outcomes and their diverse student community.

Some advantages of OERs include:

Access: All students have immediate access to their course materials and retain access after the course has ended.

Adaptability: You can start with existing OER material and modify it to tailor the content for your specific course. You can start with existing OER material and modify it to tailor the content for your specific course or you can combine multiple existing OERs into a new work.

Scalability: OERs are easy to distribute widely with little or no cost.

Enhancement of regular course content: For example, multimedia material such as videos can accompany text. Presenting information in multiple formats may help students to learn the material more easily.

Quick Circulation: Information may be disseminated rapidly (especially when compared to information published in textbooks or journals, which may take months or even years to become available). Quick availability of material may increase the timeliness and/or relevance of the material being presented.

Continually Improved Resources: Unlike textbooks and other static sources of information, OERs can be improved quickly through direct editing by users or through solicitation and incorporation of user feedback. Instructors can take an existing OER, adapt it for a class, and make the modified OER available for others to use.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are teaching, learning and research materials that are in the public domain or have an open license (see above for a more detailed definition).

Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) is a class/degree/pathway that does not pass any cost for textbooks on to the student.

While the two are often used interchangeably, they each describe different aspects of course materials. ZTC describes only the cost of the materials passed on to students, while OER describes the licensing of the course materials. The image below summarizes the intersections between these two, with the vertical axis being the license (OER or not OER) and the horizontal axis being the cost (ZTC or not ZTC). Let’s consider a few examples:

OER and ZTC (Green): Usually, courses that use an OER textbook are also ZTC, because they use a digital textbook that is free to access. Often a print version of the book can also be sold at the bookstore, but it is optional.

OER and not ZTC (Blue): In some cases, students need to purchase a printed copy of the OER or purchase access to an openly licensed homework platform. For example, STEM courses with a lab often require a printed lab manual that students use to collect and analyze their data.

Copyrighted and ZTC (Yellow): The internet is full of resources that are copyrighted, but free to access (e.g., most of the videos on YouTube). You can use these in your course for free, but they are not OER. Additionally, the library or school may purchase access to copyrighted materials that you can use in your courses. These materials are free to the student, ZTC, but not OER.

Copyrighted and not ZTC (Gray): Traditional course textbooks and materials fall in this category. The cost of the materials is passed on to the student and the materials are not openly licensed.

OER and ZTC by Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

If you are using an OER textbook for your course, you still need to adopt the book through the bookstore when textbook adoptions are sent out. Please choose “Only OER material is used for this course” for your adoption. Faculty are encouraged to add the name of the textbook with a link in the “Notes” section during textbook adoption. This allows students to see which textbook they need when searching on the bookstore’s website, providing them access before classes start.

Instructions for adopting OER materials as textbooks

It is best practice to include in your syllabus how students can order a printed copy of a digital OER. If your OER textbook is available for purchase on Amazon or through the publisher's website (e.g. OpenStax), please include this information in your syllabus. Our campus bookstore will not pre-order print copies of a digital OER textbook, as they do not tend to sell. If your OER textbook does not have print copies available online, then students can order print copies of your OER through the campus bookstore. To initiate this process, please contact the bookstore before the term starts to have your OER approved for printing and then the bookstore will print as needed. Black and white copies are very cheap at the bookstore, but color printing costs significantly more.

Most OER textbooks and materials are shared under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons (CC) Licenses are an extension of copyright that empowers creators to decide how they want their works to be used by others, including allowing for the 5 Rs discussed above. In contrast, copyrighted works can only be used if you have permission or your use falls under the limitations and exceptions of copyright. All Creative Commons licenses require Attribution, ensuring that the authors always receive credit for their work. As you become a user of OERs, it is important to include the correct attributions for each OER that you might use.

Interested in learning more? The resources below from the OER Advisory Committee delve deeper into the types of CC licenses and how to use them.

• Creative Commons Licenses
• Adapting Works from the Creative Commons

• Creative Commons Textbook
• Best Practices for Attributions
• Creative Commons FAQs