Faculty Guide on Open Education Resources (OER): Getting Started

So you want to create an Open Educational Resource (OER) but you don't know where to start.  No need to worry, we are here to help you.  The first step is to make an appointment with the new OER Coordinator Business Librarian Frans Albarillo, who is taking over for retired Associate Professor and Librarian Miriam Deutch, and an OER Developer. We'll walk through all the possibilities and help you create a wonderful OER. Bring your imagination and as much of the following to the meeting:

1. Course syllabus
2. Citations for materials you want to use

• Cite: Citations for OER materials depend on the type of material being referenced. Use the Library's Citation Tools to quickly create citations based on a resources format.
• Attribution: Refers to the crediting of work to the copyright holder and is a frequent requirement of OER licensed materials.
• ​​Licensing: OERs often have an intellectual property license attached that specifies how OERs can be used.

3. Electronic version of any documents to include (make pdfs accessible and scanned with optical character recognition)
4. Electronic versions of images
5. Lists to any sites you want included
6. Links to any OER materials you have have already found or made which you want to re-use
7. Check out the OER's created by Brooklyn College Faculty for inspiration.

Together with an OER Developer, you will then choose which OER platform to use to publish your OER. Once finished your OER will be deposited into the CUNY institutional repository, Academic Works and also OpenEd CUNY, the CUNY microsite on OER Commons.

Note:

• Since we have to adhere to copyright and fair use, OERs have licenses attached specifying how they may be used, reused, modified, and distributed. We therefore will need full citations or attributions to all content to ensure we are adhering correctly.  If you don't have full citations, we can work with you to discover them.
• All documents and files need to be checked for accessibility and made accessible. We can help you create accessible content and provide Instructions on creating accessible content.
• Instructors need to provide Alternative text (alt-text) of images to be used (especially for Art courses).

The worldwide OER movement is rooted in the human right to access high-quality education. This shift in educational practice is not just about cost savings and easy access to openly licensed content; it’s about participation and co-creation. OER offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning content through engaging educators in new participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning. OER Commons