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OER: Adopting and Creating OER

The 5R Activities of OER

OER refers to educational materials that include permission for anyone to use, modify and share at no cost. An open license permits users of a resource to participate in the 5R activities of OER:

  • Retain: Make, own, and control your own copy of the content
  • Reuse: Use the content as-is
  • Revise: Adapt, adjust, modify, improve, or alter the content
  • Remix: Combine the original or revised content with other OER to create something new
  • Redistribute: Share your copies of the original content, revisions or remixes with others

5R Definition adapted from David Wiley under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Read more about defining “open” in open educational resources.

ASCCC OERI Resources

The ASCCC OERI website contains a wealth of resources for California Community College OER developers and users. 

Check out for following pages for information and resources related to adopting and creating OER:

Resources Page (includes information about the following ASCCC OERI supported resources):

OER Developers (includes the following tools and information for OER developers):

Webinars & Events (includes information about upcoming ASCCC OER webinars and events, and an extensive archive of recorded webinars)

Creation Tools

Platforms & Tools:

Pressbooks
"Easily create e-books, typeset PDFs, and web books. Choose from professionally designed book themes. One button publishing." Free and priced options.

OER Commons - Links to the authoring platform from OER Commons. Use Module Builder to create interactive content or Open Author to create course materials using text, files, images, etc. You will be prompted to set up an account to use this platform.

Softchalk | Resource/help page
Can be used to create interactive tutorials and mash up text/media.

Google Drive Google Drive Help
Drive allows you to create web-hosted documents, presentations, forms etc. Each document can be linked to from D2L and centrally maintained (i.e. you can update the google document and it will automatically update within D2L). This can be useful especially if you are using the same material for multiple classes.

Video Editing & Storage

Screencast-o-matic | Tutorials
Easily record and edit videos of action on your computer screen.

Youtube | How to upload
The place to upload and store videos for viewing.

See more OER authoring tools

Adopting OER Video

Video by Brendan Walsh (New Jersey), 2012 (http://whyopenedmatters.org/index.html)

OER Adoption Guide

Adoption Guide (2nd Ed.) from BC Campus includes two sections: the first sections address three distinct groups involved in open textbook adoption: instructors, post-secondary institutions, and students. The second--most comprehensive--section focuses on the operational aspects of adoption: surveying instructors about, tracking usage of, and reporting out about open textbooks (and other OER). 

Modifying Existing OER (BC Campus)

Media for OER Authoring

CC Search - Searches 12 major repositories of CC image content online. This collection includes 300 million images. New version of this tool which allows you to create an attribution statement, save to lists and more. 

Bio-Image Search - Stanford's Lane Medical Library has developed a useful, rights-based search tool for biomedical images.

ClipSafari - Public domain images you can freely use for personal and commercial use without attribution to the original author.

DigCCMixter - music for videos, games, app, podcasts or just for listening

Google Advanced Search - Search by Usage Rights

The Noun Project - a platform empowering the community to build a global visual language of icons and symbols that everyone can understand. 

Internet Archive - Open Library

PhET Interactive Simulations - Provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations.

Pixaby - royalty free, high quality stock images and videos

TED Talks