Open Educational Resources (OER), Teaching

Introduction to Teaching with and Using OER in Courses

You are currently in the module on "Open Educational Resources (OER), Teaching" in a larger tutorial. Each research tutorial includes modules of topics related to the overall tutorial learning objectives. Please go through all the pages in this module by clicking on the “Next” button on the bottom of the page in order to progress. If you would like to track your progress, be sure to log in with your UNCG credentials at the top right of the module. Each module includes Quick Checks on every page. These Quick Checks do not produce a certificate; they are optional and do not track your progress. Certificates are created by completing a whole tutorial (not one module), so be sure to complete all the modules within a tutorial in order to generate a certificate. You can also take a screenshot of your progress page. 

Learning Objectives: 

  • Describe specific techniques to teach with OER in your course
  • Use specific open pedagogy strategies and tools in your course
  • Identify social justice and equity, diversity and inclusion approaches to OER and instructional design

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain and have been released under an open license that permits access, use, repurposing, reuse and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions (Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007). 

Citation:

Atkins, D. E., Brown, J. S., & Hammond, A. L. (2007). A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities. Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 84.

Teaching with OER is crucial to student success at any university. You can use OER to design your course content, whether you’re teaching face-to-face or online. In many disciplines,you can find a variety of existing OER that can be used to build modules and replace a textbook. If you do not find exactly what you want for your course, OER is adaptable and uses the 5Rs, which means that you can reuse, retain, revise, remix, and redistribute materials based on what type of copyright or Creative Commons license is used. To learn more about different aspects of OER, go to these UNCG Libraries Research Tutorials:

Finding OER at UNCG

Creating OER at UNCG

The rest of this module will take you through two opportunities afforded by teaching with OER in your courses: open pedagogy and using OER to support social justice in your virtual or face-to-face classroom. Remember that “free access to materials is not the only benefit provided by using OER. Another aspect of OER that is commonly commended by instructors is the academic freedom that using openly-licensed content affords them in taking control of their classroom and engaging students in learning.”

Taken from OER Starter Kit, open textbook

Open Dialogues: How to engage and support students in open pedagogies

Attribution: “Open Dialogues: How to engage and support students in open pedagogies” by Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, University of British Columbia is licensed CC BY 3.0.

Quick Check:

Next