Creating and Hosting OER Materials

In order to create an easily shareable open resource, you need it to be easily accessible to everyone. Platforms and tools are used to create resources; hosting systems and services make resources available to everyone on the Internet. Some platforms provide hosting, and some platforms and hosting options are exclusive from each other.

If you create OER on your own computer through platforms and tools like word processors (Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs), presentation software (Google Slides, Keynote, PowerPoint), or art and layout platforms (Canva, InDesign, Illustrator, Blender, GIMP), these platforms do not always make it possible to immediately and easily share these files on a permanently-hosted and sustainable place. You will need an alternative option for hosting materials online.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

UNCG has a variety of tools to help you create and host online learning objects, and it’s recommended that you contact your department’s instructional technology consultant (ITC) to learn what might work best for you to create OER and your course learning objectives. This is not a full list of tools available at UNCG. 

UNCG ITS Instructional Technology Tools:

Instructure’s Canvas Learning Management System (LMS), UNCG’s LMS, allows you to upload documents and create all of your own original content. You can share OER through their repository Canvas Commons, which allows you to place your own license on materials.

Adobe Creative Cloud Suite is available at UNCG for instructors. This also includes Adobe Spark, which is useful for creating media in a website-like platform. This platform also includes Adobe Acrobat, which is useful for PDF creation and editing, including providing OCR on PDFs. 

Microsoft Office 365 allows you to create presentations, documents, and more. 

YouTube allows you to host videos, provide closed captioning, and apply Creative Commons licenses in the video description. 

Freely available and approved to use at UNCG:

OER Commons OpenAuthor, a free and open site/course creator platform.

H5P allows you to create open, interactive tutorials and other HTML5 interactions. Their service through H5P.org is only available to test out their product, but you can create and host materials through a Wordpress plugin for free. 

Fee-based and may require consultation with your departmental ITC:

PressBooks uses WordPress as a platform to publish open textbooks in multiple formats. There is a one-time charge to make your OER available in these formats.

SoftChalk Cloud uses the SoftChalk desktop platform but allows your works to be published in their open and public SoftChalk Repository.

This information is adapted from:

Affordable Learning Georgia, Help with Creating OER, Platforms and Hosting

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