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Open Educational Resources

Create OER

The breadth of OER currently available is growing every day! But in some cases, you may not find acceptable content for your specific needs or content area. Perhaps, you'll consider creating OER from scratch. Before you do so, we recommend considering workflow, scope, as well as a few key factors.

Workflow

William Meinke has used instructional design frameworks to define a few key stages in OER creation. Each phase includes multiple steps and prompts to help you manage the process. View the complete flowchart and workflows. 

Priming Phase

Pre-production Phase

Design Phase

Development Phase

  • Write and revise

  • Check accessibility

  • Get peer review

  • Import to platform

  • Format and style

Publishing Phase

  • Archive content

  • Create export versions

  • Assign a CC License

  • Assign metadata

  • Distribute to students

 

 

From: OER Workflow V1.1  by Billy Meinke and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Outreach College, licensed under a CC BY 4.0. International license.

Recommend Reading & Reference

  The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) [Accompanying video series]

  BC Campus Self-Publishing Guide

  Authoring Open Textbooks

  A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students

  OTN Publishing Course

  Tips for New Creators

OER Authoring Tools

There are many tools available for authoring and sharing OER content. Explore this comparative analysis by Michele DeSilva and Amy Hofer, licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. 

University of Colorado APS #1014

Open Educational Resources & University of Colorado APS #1014: Intellectual Property That is Educational Materials 

Policy location: https://www.cu.edu/ope/aps/1014 

Under APS #1014 and Regent Policy 5.k, faculty receive from the University an assignment of ownership in the educational materials that they create.

As a result of APS #1014, faculty are free to publish and license many of the educational, scholarly, and artistic materials that they create. Faculty may choose to license their educational materials with Creative Commons licenses, for example, which are widely used by authors/creators to license open educational resources (OER). 

APS #1014 creates some exceptions to the general rule of faculty ownership. These can include educational materials that result from funded research/technology, and cases where the University invests very significantly in the faculty member’s work and may therefore have an ownership interest in the educational materials. Additionally, intellectual property created by classified and university staff in the course of their University duties belongs to the University.

If you have questions about your ability under APS #1014 to license the educational materials that you create or adapt, begin a conversation with your department chair or associate dean. Your department chair/dean can consider your questions and consult with University Counsel as appropriate.

If you have questions about using Creative Commons licenses, consider the Libraries’ Creative Commons LibGuide for general information and contact Melissa Cantrell, Scholarly Communication Librarian, with specific questions.