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Open Educational Resources (OER)

This guide offers an overview of OER, open licensing, and will help you to locate and evaluate open resources to use in your courses or as supplementary material.

Evaluating OER graphic

Evaluating OER

Hooray! You have found an Open Educational Resource that you believe may be a useful addition to your course curriculum or research. Now, it is important that you go through a quick review process to decide if the resource will suit your needs. Below are some resources and criteria that you may wish to use in order to determine the suitability of the OER you have found. 

 

Evaluating OER

When it comes to evaluating Open Educational Resources, be sure to use an evaluation process similar to what you would use when evaluating a traditional textbook or any other resources you would normally wish to incorporate into a course. Consider criteria such as: 

  • Content and Accuracy
  • Relevance to the Learning Objectives of Your Course/ Discipline Standards
  • Source and Review Process
  • Production Quality
  • Accessibility and Usability
  • Formatting
  • Cultural Relevance and Sensitivity
  • Copyright and Licensing Permissions
     

OER Rubrics

Consider using a standardized rubric to assess the suitability of resources. Below are several sample rubrics and tools for evaluating OER:

Disclaimer

The content provided in this guide is intended for informational purposes only. The Melvin J. Zahnow Library at SVSU does not make any assurances as to the accuracy of the information contained within linked resources, or as to the licenses and permissions granted for the use of these works. Always be certain to check the permissions for each resource before using the work. 

Questions? Contact Tiler Jewell at tbjewell@svsu.edu.

For questions or problems, please contact Beth Johns. or Matthew Anderson.