Creating OER is similar to authoring any other document (a Word-document, a PDF or a video), except that you are assigning an open license to that content and making it as widely available as possible. Of course, that implies making sure you have cleared copyright on any third party material you use.
Tips and tools before sharing
- The OA Books Toolkit helps book authors to better understand open access book publishing and to increase trust in open access books.
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Check the SURF-website for a roadmap on developing and sharing your own open educational material.
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Before sharing your material, ensure they are of good quality. SURF offers information on the use of a quality model that can help in assessing learning materials.
Copyright & Creative Commons (CC) licenses
OER’s are published under Creative Commons (CC) licenses, meaning you retain the original copyright to your work while enabling others to freely access and re-distribute your work.
What license will you assign to your OER?
1. Attribution CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
2. Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
3. Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
4. Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
5. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
6. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
Adding metadata to your OER
In order to let others find what they need it is crucial to label and organise your created materials by describing these as detailed as possible.These descriptions are referred to as metadata and describe various aspects of the items, including grade level, subject area, and material type. In case of questions please consult our metadata specialist via edusources-ub@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Publishing your OER | edusources
How will you share your OER? Once you’ve created your OER, you may want to share it across many directories and repositories for maximum visibility. There are sites available from which you can directly upload and share your materials, and there are educational repositories designed specifically to assist with the creation and hosting of OER. Consider submitting your work to MERLOT, OER Commons or the Open Textbook Library. Or join us in the edusources project. Next to storage, attention is being paid to connect to other existing platforms and searching both within and beyond the Sharekit. Maastricht University is one of the participating institutes.
Edusources in a nutshell
The edusources platform is the result of several pioneer initiatives (like Wikiwijs and HBO-kennisbank) and is currently being upgraded in a national incentive scheme. It contains a varied range of collections of (open) educational resources, and facilitates the easy exchange of these resources for subject teachers.
- This infographic summarizes at a glance how edusources works.
- In this Introduction to Open Educational Resources you will find more information about sharing, reusing, developing and collecting open educational resources within Edusources.
- Read all about edusources on SURF.nl/edusources.
What is on edusources already?
On edusources you can find materials easily and quickly. Initially by using the search bar, but if you already have a better idea of what you’re looking for, you can immediately filter by level of education, language or type of learning material. You can refine your search results even further, for example by language, educational institution and subject area. On the Communities page, you can also easily search for collections of educational resources that are put together by specific communities.
Start sharing via edusources
You can share your resources entirely openly or only within the institution or professional community. If you want to start sharing your material via the edusources platform, you can start right away (you are required to login on the backend of edusources or the Sharekit via SURF conext) or contact us for an intake. Note: you can upload material, but publishing is done by the library (send your request to the repository manager). Want to learn more or get started right away? Contact us via edusources-ub@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Creating digital accessible course material
When you create educational material for your students, you undoubtedly consider the level and background of your ‘audience’ and what they are supposed to do / reach with the material. But before sharing the materials, did you also check whether your material is digital accessible for students with physical or cognitive disabilities?
Find out more about this topic on this page.