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Open Educational Resources (OER)

How to find, evaluate, use, and adapt OER materials for use in the classroom to help reduce textbook costs.

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. USC provides access to Google apps, including Drive. 

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.

Photo Editing

Pixlr Tutorials & FAQ 
Online photo editor and drawing tool. Requires Flash

See more OER authoring tools

Attribution

This page was adapted from Portland Community College Library's Open Educational Resources: Create guide by Jen Klaudinyi, licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0 US.

Authoring and Licensing Resources

Creative Commons provides information on ways to legally share your online resources. Look here for information on the license to use when licensing your own material or citing someone else's material in your course.

All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially. Every Creative Commons license also ensures licensors get the credit for their work they deserve. Every Creative Commons license works around the world and lasts as long as applicable copyright lasts (because they are built on copyright). These common features serve as the baseline, on top of which licensors can choose to grant additional permissions when deciding how they want their work to be used. From: https://creativecommons.org/licenses

Open WA Attribution Builder  - Helps create proper attribution/citations when using and adapting OER content.

Creating and Modifying OER Tutorial - From Affordable Learning Georgia, a guide to adapting OER. Includes licensing and accessibility info.

BC Campus OpenEd Authoring Guide - Recommended reading for adapting and authoring OER. Some content is campus specific. This comprehensive guide includes nuts and bolts details about authoring OER. It also contains a discussion of various formats for open textbooks and a helpful section about permission to adapt OER for those timid about borrowing or adapting content (see section titled "Permission to Adapt").

University of Saskatchewan OER Authoring Guide - Thorough guide to OER authoring using Pressbooks. 

Best practices for attribution from Creative Commons - Includes helpful examples of proper attribution of content with Creative Commons licenses. 

Adapting and Authoring OER: Lessons Learned - Ths is an informative webinar where a librarian and instructors from Central Oregon Community College discuss their experience authoring OER.

Accessibility Resources

University of Georgia Accessibility Resources - Includes a helpful list of questions about accessibility. 

BC Campus OpenEd Accessibility Toolkit - Addresses the needs of users with limited vision or other disabilities in accessing your OER