Trying to think of ways to save your students money while still providing quality content? This session will provide an overview of OER (Open Educational Resources) and how to implement it in an accessible, user-friendly way. We’ll show multiple examples of OER and UDL (Universal Design for Learning) best practices.

1. HOW TO IMPLEMENT OER IN AN
ACCESSIBLE, USER-FRIENDLY
WAY
Montana Library Association Annual Conference
April 16, 2021

2. Your Presenters
Meghan Salsbury
Instructional Technology Librarian
meghan.salsbury@montana.edu
Jacqueline L. Frank
Instruction & Accessibility Librarian
jacqueline.frank@montana.edu

3. Outline
• OER Introduction
• OER formats & accessibility considerations
• Live Example: Embedding OER into LMS
• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Best Practices
• Live example: UDL in action

4. Introductio
n to OER https://libraryguides.mdc.edu/oer

5. Introduction to OER
UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
• 2002 (UNESCO) forum
• Goal was “to develop together a universal educational resource
available for the whole of humanity.”
• Created the term “open educational resources”
• Open content, open educational resources, and open textbooks
are all terms for this open content

6. UNESCO
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials
that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The
nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely
copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to
curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video
and animation.
WHAT are OER?

7. WHY use OER?
Increase student success through access
• Students who enrolled in courses utilizing OER performed as
well as or better than their peers using traditional course
materials
• Study found a positive relationship between the use of OER
and student performance in an online history course
• Researchers found that students in courses that used OER more
frequently had better grades and lower failure and withdrawal
rates than their counterparts in courses that did not use OER

8. WHY use OER?
Out-of-Pocket Expenses
• Financial aid, scholarships, and grants usually calculated for specific costs
o Tuition & Fees
o Room & Board
• Book costs are determined by major/schedule
o Many students do not know cost until they arrive on campus
o Do not realize books are not factored into other costs
o Forced to pay out-of-pocket
o Another barrier for underserved students

9. WHYuse OER?
Increasing cost of college textbooks
• Between 2011-12 and 2016-17, published tuition and fee prices rose by
9% in the public four-year sector
• College Board - average undergraduate student should budget between
$1,200 and $1,300 for textbooks and supplies
o ~40% of tuition at a two-year community college
o ~13% of tuition at a four-year public institution
• 65% of students reported they did not purchase textbooks because of
the high price

10. OER
Formats
Types of CC Licenses

11. OER Formats & Accessibility
Considerations
• Choosing accessible resources & file formats
• Access as success
• Accessibility benefits everyone
• Offering multiple formats is best
19%
Undergraduates with
a disability (NCES)

12. OER Formats
• Text based documents:
• Textbooks
• Curricula
• Syllabi
• lecture notes
• Multi-media
• Audio
• Video
• Animation
• Course elements (Text-based or
Multi-media)
• Assignments
• Tests
• Projects

13. Common OER Formats: Text Based
• EPUB - Short for electronic publication;
e-book file format
• HTML - standard markup language for
creating websites
• PDF - Portable document format;
independent of application software,
hardware, and operating systems.
• Reflowable
• Change font size text &
color contrast
• Supports vector images,
metadata, and CSS styling
• Maintains original visual layout
• Available offline
• Good for printing

14. Common OER Formats: Text Based
• XML - markup language for encoding documents or information in a
format that is both human-readable and machine-readable
• XHTML – in family of XML markup languages, & extends versions of
HTML
• Mobi - e-book file format for Kindle
• Open Document Format (ODF) - XML-based file format for
office applications, including spreadsheets, presentations, and word
processing documents

15. OER Considerations: Audio/Visual
Content
ACCESSIBILITY BEST PRACTICES TO
LOOK FOR:
• Images have alt-text
• Videos have closed captions and transcripts
• Audio has transcripts
MSU Library Accessibly & Instruction Guide

16. WHERE to find OER
• 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.
• 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.
• Open Textbook Library (OTN)
• Open textbooks from the OTN are licensed by authors and publishers to
be freely used and adapted. Download, edit and distribute them at no cost.
• Example OER with multiple formats

17. Live Example:
Embedding OER into
LMS

18. UDL Best
Practices
https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/course-design-
ideas/universal-design-for-learning/

19. UDL Best Practices
• CAST Guidelines
• “Universal design for learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and
optimize teaching and learning for all people.” –CAST
• Engagement
• “Stimulate interest and motivation for learning.
• Representation
• “Present information and content in different ways.”
• Action & Expression
• “Differentiate the ways that students can express what they know.”

20. UDL Best Practices, cont.
• Engagement
• Involve learners in setting their own academic goals
• Allow learners to participate in the design of assignments & activities
• Facilitate self-reflection
• Representation
• Offer alternatives for audio/visual information: captions & transcripts
• Promote understanding across languages: avoid jargon, acronyms, &
abbreviations
• Action & Expression
• Optimize access to assistive technologies: Provide OER with Multiple formats
• Provide Options: Let students choose the format of their assignments

21. Live Example:
UDL in Action

22. References
CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2.
http://udlguidelines.cast.org
The College Board. (2017). Tuition and fees and room and board
over
time, 1976-77 to 2016-17, selected years. Trends in
Higher Education.
Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., &
Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student
access and outcomes. European Journal of Open,
Distance and E–Learning.
Fischer, L., Hilton III, J., Robinson, T.J., & Wiley, D. (2015) A multi
institutional study of the impact of open textbook
adoption on the learning outcomes of postsecondary
students. Journal of Computing in Higher
Education, 27(3), 159-172. doi:10.1007/s12528015-9101-
x
Grewe, K. & Davis, W.P. (2017). The impact of enrollment in
an OER course on student learning outcomes. The
International Review of Research in Open and
Distributed Learning, 18(4), 231-238.
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/29
86/209
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
(2002, July 8). UNESCO promotes new initiative for free
educational resources on the Internet.
http://www.unesco.org/education/news_en/080702_fr
ee_ed u_ress.shtml
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016). College

23. Resources
► OER Commons
► Open Course Library
► Open Textbook Library
► OpenStax
► MERLOT II
► Open Educational
Resources (OER) at
Montana State University
► MSU Library Instruction &
Accessibility Guide
► Remote/Online Teaching
Help

24. Questions

25. UDL Slides Check
✔ Minimum 24 sans serif font​
✔ Use of bullets/numbers for lists​
✔ Correct reading order​
✔ Sufficient color contrast ​
✔ Plain language​
✔ Alt-text for images​
✔ Descriptive links