by Sarah Morehouse, Librarian at Empire State College and Kathleen Stone, Coordinator of Curriculum Development and Instructional Design at Empire State College

1. What are they?
Finding and evaluating them
Creating and licensing them
By Kathleen Stone and Sarah Morehouse

3.  Online delivery method
 But can have a physical version
 Any format or medium
 Any genre
 Any size/length or level of granularity

4.  Open Textbooks are one kind of OER
 Free
 Online
 Often customizable by the professor
 Many have the same kinds of editorial support
and peer review as traditional textbooks

5.  15 peer reviewed FREE ONLINE textbooks in
critical subject areas
 Will be published this fall through SUNY
Press
 The IITG grant got renewed, so keep your
ears open for the next call for proposals.

6. FREE
 No cost to access
 Can link to it
OPEN
 No cost to access
 Can link to it
 Can copy and share copies
 Sometimes can create
derivative works
 No need to ask permission
 No royalties

7.  Copyright allows major content providers
(publishers, vendors) to:
 Make content too expensive
 Put up barriers to good educational practice
 Creative Commons is a workaround within
the copyright system
 Copyright owners can opt in to Creative
Commons

8.  Opt-in system of license that allows the
copyright owner to specify what
permissions are automatically granted:
 Make copies and share copies
 Make derivative works
 And to whom:
 Everyone or non-commercial only?
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

10.  Creative Commons:
http://search.creativecommons.org
 Google Advanced Search:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search

11.  OER Commons:
http://www.oercommons.org/
 MERLOT:
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

12.  Connexions: http://cnx.org
 The Orange Grove:
http://florida.theorangegrove.org/og/access
/home.do
 Vimeo: https://vimeo.com
 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/

13.  OER Assessment Rubric –
http://www.rcampus.com/rubricshowc.cfm?
code=L9WC6X&sp=yes

15.  Enlightened self-interest - participate in
something that benefits you
 Gain a wider audience
 Improve higher education and help control
the costs
 Make it easier for your colleagues to reuse
and repurpose your work

16.  Make sure others can translate it and adapt
it for local needs
 Non-proprietary format (a.k.a. open format)
 Allow derivative works
 Make it accessible for people with
disabilities
 Make it accessible for people with old/slow
technology

17.  What if somebody uses it in an
inappropriate context or changes it in a bad
way?
 It doesn’t reflect on you any more than it would
if they had cited you.
 They have to link back to your original, so people
will see what you actually intended.
 You can add instructions or recommendations
for use.

18.  OER Authoring Tools -
http://subjectguides.esc.edu/oerauthoringto
ols
 Some you install, some you use online
 Some free and open source, others just free

20.  You need to own the copyright
 Your co-authors agree to it
 It’s not a work for hire
 You didn’t sign the copyright over to a
publisher/journal
 You’ve cleared the copyrights for any other
works that are part of it

21.  Creative Commons License Chooser
http://creativecommons.org/choose/

22.  Put it out there:
 MERLOT and YouTube/Scribd/Slideshare are
good places to start.
 Share it with your colleagues
 Give it a title and keywords (metadata, tags)
that will help people find it