Faculty Guide for OER

OER Support
The OER Team at UA Cossatot will serve a central support role for all faculty wishing to incorporate OER into a course. After submitting an application and an initial meeting with the Director of Educational Resources, OER applicants will be enrolled in a Blackboard course to learn more about OER. All sections of the course will include the same OER. Additional consultation with OER Board members while developing a course that meets the highest academic quality is required.

After deciding to develop an OER course, the instructor should submit an application to rruth@cccua.edu. Once the course is developed, the OER Specialist will review the course and provide recommendations to the chancellor and vice-chancellor. See UA Cossatot Procedure 611-3 for specific guidelines.

OER Mission Statement: The goal of UA Cossatot’s Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative is to reduce the expense of educational resources for students, while maintaining high academic quality within coursework and to increase faculty participation in a learning environment that encourages innovative global sharing of knowledge.

OER Evaluation Criteria

Clarity, Comprehensibility, and Readability

• Is the content, including any instructions, exercises, or supplemental material, clear and comprehensible to students?
• Is the content well-categorized in terms of logic, sequencing, and flow?
• Is the content consistent with its language and key terms

Content Accuracy and Technical Accuracy

• Is the content accurate based on both your expert knowledge and through external sources?
• Are there any factual, grammatical, or typographical errors?
• Is the interface easy to navigate? Are there broken links or obsolete formats?

Adaptability and Modularity

• Is the resource in a file format that allows for adaptations, modifications, rearrangements, and updates?
• Is the resource easily divided into modules, or sections, which can then be used or rearranged out of their original order?
• Is the content licensed in a way which allows for adaptations and modifications?

Appropriateness

• Is the content presented at a reading level appropriate for higher education students?’
• How is the content useful for instructors or students?
• Is the content itself appropriate for higher education?

Accessibility

• Is the content accessible to students with disabilities through the compatibility of third-party reading applications?
• If you are using Web resources, does each image have alternate text that can be read?
• Do videos have accurate closed-captioning?
• Are students able to access the materials in a quick, non-restrictive manner?

Supplementary Resources

• Does the OER contain any supplementary materials, such as homework resources, study guides, tutorials, or assessments?
• Have you reviewed these supplementary resources in the same manner as the original OER?

CC-BY 3.0 List adapted from CCCOER Review Guidelines: http://collegeopentextbooks.ning.com/page/review-2