OER Guidebook

5.1 Adopt 5.1A Find

The first step to adopting OERs is to find open resources in the relevant subject area. Faculty may conduct searches of repositories and referatories themselves (see the Hagerstown Community College Library OER LibGuide at https://hagerstowncc.libguides.com/oer/home for a list of the most up-to-date resources). Librarians are also available to assist in the search. 5.1B Evaluate Once relevant OERs have been located, the next step is to carefully evaluate them. Achieve, Inc. (2011) recommends evaluating OER Objects on the following criteria. A detailed rubric for each criterion is available at their website. • Degree of alignment to standards

• Quality of explanation of the subject matter • Utility of materials designed to support teaching • Quality of assessment • Quality of technological interactivity • Quality of instructional and practice exercises • Opportunities for deeper learning • Assurance of accessibility

Additional rubrics are available on the HCC OER LibGuide, or instructors may wish to create a custom rubric including the most significant aspects for their class(es). As always, accessibility for students with disabilities should play an important role in the evaluation process. 5.1C Adopt Instructors should be sure to go through the proper administrative processes to adopt open materials for their classes, including consulting with the lead faculty member for each course. This process may include departmental and/or division approval. In many cases, helping students access OER materials is as simple as providing them with a link to an online resource. The Campus Store and/or Digital Printing may also be able to provide options for students who wish to purchase hard copies of textbook resources. 5.2 Create If excellent resources are not readily available, instructors may wish to create their own materials from scratch. This could be as simple as creating a test to accompany an existing resource or as complex as writing a textbook from the ground up. Many excellent resources exist to guide faculty in this process. See the HCC LibGuide on OERs for more information. Instructors at Hagerstown Community College who wish to sell their self-published materials in the Campus Store must follow the Digital Printing Self-Publishing Guidelines available at http://www.hagerstowncc.edu/design-services/self-publishing When deciding how to license self-created content, authors should consider using Creative Commons licensing (http://www.creativecommons.org). Creative Commons provides a range of licenses from freely available with no attribution required to more restrictive licenses specifying that the author must be credited, derivatives of the work must also be shared freely, and that the work may not be used for

Hagerstown Community College Open Educational Resources Guidebook

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