Instructional Staff Quick Start Kit

Quick Start Kit

For faculty, OER often begins with a need to fill content gaps, or to identify enhanced or replacement resources for a course. The following list of steps illustrates a typical OER development process to consider as a starting point.

  • Start by looking for suitable resources that will contribute to your instructional objectives. Search dedicated OER repositories, starting with Nebraska’s OER Commons Hub which has resources vetted by Nebraska teachers and aligned to Nebraska K-12 standards. Then move on to other popular OER repositories.
  • Consider your own materials that may be available offline, including lecture notes, handouts and other resources prepared previously. Be sure to check your institution’s intellectual property policies to see if a material you’ve developed can be used and shared as OER, with an open license.

See the Curating Module in this toolkit for additional support in finding OER, or contact your ESU for help.

  • With your collection of resources at your disposal, start piecing them together to create a learning resource or set of resources to meet your instructional objectives and learning outcomes. This is a creative design process of building an educational resource from scratch and/or using components you have found.
  • As you compose, use OER authoring tools to support your work, such as the Open Author Lesson Builder.

See the Creating Module in this toolkit for additional support in composing OER.

  • You may decide to use the OER that you compile “as is,” by printing or downloading them, or sharing the links with your students.
  • You may also decide to adapt the resources to local needs, or even revise them later based on feedback once implemented.
  • Your adaptations may involve minor corrections and improvements, remixing or adding new components, or even completely reworking the resources.

See the Creating Module and the Curating Module in this toolkit for additional support in adopting or adapting OER, or contact your ESU for help.

  • Through open licensing, OER opens up possibilities for new, more collaborative teaching and learning practices–because the materials can be used, adapted and shared within and across learning communities.
  • As you implement OER in your courses, take advantage of these possibilities. Pair up with a colleague on the implementation of OER, invite peer and student critique of the materials, or engage students as co-creators in OER-based assignments.

For additional information on OER practices such as these, see the Teaching Module  in this toolkit.

  • Make your resources available for your peers and the open education community to find, and to begin the life cycle again.
  • Add descriptors so that others can find and use the resource, and select the appropriate license for any new or adapted resources.
  • Access online tools that can help you describe and share your resources such as the Nebraska’s OER Commons hub or LiveBinder.

For additional information on sharing OER, see the Curating Module in this toolkit.

Attribution:  The text in the instructional Staff Quick Start Kit is derivative of content in OER Handbook for Educators by WikiEducator, licensed under CC BY 4.0

Attribution: “Creating Open Educational Resources” by Abbey Elder, licensed under CC BY 4.0

Updated June 19, 2019 1:32pm