You have to have a plan!
Creating open educational resources is like authoring other teaching materials except that the content is assigned an open license allowing for its free use and repurposing by others.
Planning
- Create the content - Consider the scope and purpose of authoring your own book before starting.
- Give proper attribution to others' work - if you use other OER as your basis, make sure that you follow the stated licensing rules.
Pick a Tool
- Put your content in a professional format - There are many tools for creating professional looking ebooks. Choose one that meets your needs.
Make it Accessible
- Accessibility standards - Ensure that your content can be read by all by following accessibility standards when you create it.
- Decide your license - Assign a Creative Commons license to your work in order to make it usable and shareable by others.
- Make it editable - If you would like to allow others to edit and add to your work, make sure there are editable versions of the book available.
Share
- Spread the word - Submit your work on an open platform such as Merlot or OER Commons to make it discoverable.
Evaluate & Update
- Review and update - Improve your work by gathering feedback, fixing errors, and creating new editions.
Publishing
- VIVA | Open PublishingVIVA Open Publishing is an Open and Affordable initiative providing centralized publishing services and support for VIVA member institution's library publishing programs utilizing the Pressbooks and VIVA Open publishing platforms.
- BCcampus | Pressbooks Guide: A reference for OER creators using PressbooksThis Pressbooks Guide builds on information provided in the Pressbooks User Guide published by Pressbooks.com. It follows the steps an author might take to create or modify an open educational resource (OER) in Pressbooks. Each chapter points readers to the pertinent chapters in the Pressbooks User Guide, provides any additional information, and includes instructions specific to post-secondary faculty and staff working in British Columbia and the Yukon.
- BCcampus | Self-Publishing Guide : A reference for writing and self-publishing an open textbookThe BCcampus Open Education Self-Publishing Guide is a reference for individuals or groups wanting to write and self-publish an open textbook. This guide provides details on the preparation, planning, writing, publication, and maintenance of an open textbook.
- LibretextsThe LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society.
- OER Commons | Open AuthorOpen Author helps you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you and for the benefit of educators and learners everywhere.
Creation, Adoption, and Adaptation
- BCcampus Pressbooks CatalogExplore the range of resources developed for BC post-secondary faculty, staff, and students. These resources were published by BCcampus in Pressbooks.
- Open Education Network (OEN) | Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to KnowThis is a five-step guide for faculty, and those who support faculty, who want to modify an open textbook. Step-by-step instructions for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types are included.
Tools for Creating OER
"Creating Open Educational Resources" by Abbey Elder is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International license
- BookdownThe bookdown package is an open-source R package that facilitates writing books and long-form articles/reports with R Markdown. You can export your content in multiple formats: PDF, LaTeX, HTML, EPUB, and Word. Can be published to GitHub, bookdown.org, or any web server.
- GitBookCreated by GitHub, GitBooks is an open source tool that allows you to create a textbook that is hosted in a GitHub repository. You can create your content in Markdown or embed rich, multimedia content. There is currently no PDF export option. This tool was originally developed for creating technical documentation guides, so it does not have as many of the features of other OER tools.
- Jupyter NotebookJupyter Notebook is an open source web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and text. Jupyter supports over 40 programming languages and can be shared through GitHub or the Jupyter Notebook Viewer. Good for computational OER that involves users interacting with code or visualizations, and you want an open source solution.
- OER Commons Open AuthorMentioned in the video, Open Author is a free tool to help you build and publish Open Educational Resources for you, educators, and learners everywhere.
- PressbooksMentioned in the video, Pressbooks allows you to create OER and other open educational resources, add interactive quizzes, embed video, publish print-ready and online formats. Only free up to a point.
- ScreenPalTheir screen capture tools help you easily create, edit, and communicate with videos and images.
- YouTube Creators"Everything you need to create on YouTube"