Subject: Discover & Integrate High-Quality OER in Your Courses 🔍
Dear [Faculty Member],
Welcome to our next topic in the Open Education series! Today, we'll explore how to find and use Open Educational Resources (OER) effectively in your courses at Texas State University. Let's dive into some tips and tools to help you locate high-quality, relevant OER that can be seamlessly integrated into your curriculum.
- Decide What You Need 💭 Consider starting small, by adopting a portion of an open textbook or perhaps supplementing with digital learning objects. Embedding OER like the Writing Guide or College Success into [your campus LMS] is a quick and easy way to offer your students additional support.
- Start with Trusted Repositories 📚 Begin your search for OER by visiting reputable repositories, such as OER Commons, MERLOT, and OpenStax. These platforms offer a wealth of curated resources across various disciplines, ensuring that you'll find materials that align with your course objectives and meet quality standards.
- Use Advanced Search Features 🔎 When searching for OER, make use of advanced search filters to narrow down your results. Look for resources that have been peer-reviewed, have a Creative Commons license, and are compatible with your preferred teaching format (e.g., online, blended, or face-to-face). Filter by content type to find videos, notes, homework sets, textbooks, tutorials, etc.
- Evaluate OER for Quality and Relevance 🧐 Before integrating OER into your courses, assess them for accuracy, comprehensiveness, and currency. Consider whether the resources align with your learning objectives, are culturally inclusive, and can be easily adapted to meet your students' needs. Some platforms, like the Open Textbook Library, include ratings and reviews to help with evaluation.
- Leverage OER Curation Tools 🛠️ Tools like OER Bookmarklet and Hypothesis can help you organize, annotate, and share OER with your colleagues. These tools not only streamline the process of curating resources but also facilitate collaboration and knowledge-sharing among faculty members.
By following these tips and utilizing the available tools, you'll be well on your way to finding and using OER effectively in your courses. In our next email, we'll explore discipline-specific repositories and how to get help finding OER.
Stay tuned for more insights on Open Education!
Best regards,
[Signature]
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