This guide is for faculty authors, librarians, project managers and others who are involved in the production of open textbooks in higher education and K-12. Content includes a checklist for getting started, publishing program case studies, textbook organization and elements, writing resources and an overview of useful tools.

This Beginning Excel textbook is intended for use in a one-term introductory spreadsheet course for all majors taught at two-year colleges. The basics of Excel, as they apply to the professional workplace, are introduced, including spreadsheet design, data entry, formulas, functions, charts, tables, and multi-sheet use. This textbook includes instructions for Excel for Mac also.

Description provided by COERLL:

COERLL hosted an online “OER hangout” on September 25th on the subject of creating open educational resources (OER) with students. With 26 people attending, five language instructors shared their experiences of working with their students to create openly licensed resources for teaching and learning:

Amber Hoye and Kelly Arispe lead the Boise State University Department of World Languages’ Pathways OER Language Teaching Repository of openly licensed proficiency based activities, created by students and teachers.

Kathryn Murphy-Judy, Ngoc-My Guidarelli, and Laura Middlebrooks are part of a team of faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University who have developed an open, connected platform for students to share authentic resources.

At Boise State, upper-level undergraduate students, with the mentorship of staff and faculty, create activities to be used in the weekly language lab component of introductory language courses. These activities can also be used in the classroom and K-12 teachers in Idaho have been involved in creating and teaching with them. At Virginia Commonwealth University, undergraduate students in the 202 class, who are either majors on their way to upper level courses or students finishing their language requirement, curate authentic resources and discuss them with native speakers. Then, upper level students turn those curations into instructional modules, which are being integrated into online open textbooks.

You can learn more about the logistics of these projects by viewing the webinar video, reading about the projects, and perusing the materials. Here, we’ll mention a few of the important themes that came up during the discussion.

One important element of students being involved in materials creation is that they understand what other students will be interested in and can choose topics and texts they know their peers will enjoy. Involving students ensures that a more diverse array of voices and perspectives are represented in the materials, and gives students more of a choice in their own education. Students also gain skills beyond language and culture when they work on these projects: digital citizenship, open license knowledge, technical skills, an understanding of language proficiency, and knowledge of state and national standards.

Each of these projects has a broad community of people with various skills who can support each other and contribute in different ways. At Boise State, the language resource center director, language students and students from other departments, faculty mentors, SLA & CALL researchers, K-12 teachers, state partners, and librarians have all contributed to the OER. At VCU, students, faculty, and librarians contribute to the materials and partnerships are developing with K-12 teachers who use the materials in their courses.

Each of these projects follows an iterative process of development. The work doesn’t start and finish in the span of a semester, it grows and changes. Students develop materials, native speakers proofread them, teachers teach with them, and the team refines them. The Pathways Project carries a disclaimer that “The activities on the Pathways Project OER Repository were created by upper-division students at Boise State University and serve as a foundation that our community of practice can build upon and refine. While they are polished, we welcome and encourage collaboration from language instructors to help modify grammar, syntax, and content where needed.” The cycle of the projects is such that lower-level students can get involved in the project as learners, but go on to take a more active role in the project as they progress.

The panelists recommend to anyone interested in creating OER with their students that they start small, and reach out to available communities (institution-wide, or online professional networks) for support and sharing. On that note, COERLL’s next OER hangout is on the topic of joining a teacher community. Join us on November 13th!

View the webinar video, links to the repositories, slides from the presenters, and more on the event page of COERLL’s website.

A rubric designed by educators from Lawrence Public Schools to be used in its annual review process of openly licensed educational resources.

This module includes information to help find, evaluate, adapt and share open educational resources to meet learning outcomes and objectives. The module also offers information on how to describe and organize OER to enable its discovery by future users.

If you haven’t discovered already, there are myriad open resources that exist. Often the trouble lies in locating those that fit precisely what you need. We’ve broken down these resources with the intent of making the search process more efficient and effective. For each you’ll find a list of unique traits, licensing information, and an example of how to attribute the source. Click one of the media sources in the Find Resources sub-menu for the details.

Across the country, districts are choosing to #GoOpen and transitioning to the use of openly licensed educational resources to improve student learning in their schools. Openly licensed educational resources enable districts to reallocate significant funds currently spent on inflexible, static learning materials to resources and activities that accelerate the transition to digital learning. These include implementing new professional learning programs for teachers, developing a robust technology infrastructure to support digital learning, and funding new leadership roles for educators who curate and create openly licensed educational materials.
The #GoOpen District Launch Packet is designed for districts that have decided to implement a systematic approach to incorporating openly licensed educational resources into their curriculum by becoming a #GoOpen District.

A rubric designed by the Grossmont Unified High School District to be used when assessing the quality of resources.

If you have found yourself searching for, adapting or creating materials for your heritage classes because of a lack of readily available commercial resources, this site is for you!

This collection of lessons represent adapted and remixed instructional content for teaching media literacy and specifically civic online reasoning through distance learning. These lessons take students through the steps necessary to source online content, verify evidence presented, and corroborate claims with other sources.

The original lesson plans are the work of Stanford History Education Group, licensed under CC 4.0. Please refer to the full text lesson plans at Stanford History Education Group’s, Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum for specifics regarding background, research findings, and additional curriculum for teaching media literacy in the twenty-first century.

This collection of lessons represent adapted and remixed instructional content for teaching media literacy and specifically civic online reasoning through distance learning. These lessons take students through the steps necessary to source online content, verify evidence presented, and corroborate claims with other sources.

The original lesson plans are the work of Stanford History Education Group, licensed under CC 4.0. Please refer to the full text lesson plans at Stanford History Education Group’s, Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum for specifics regarding background, research findings, and additional curriculum for teaching media literacy in the twenty-first century.

Introductory Business Statistics is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the one-semester statistics course for business, economics, and related majors. Core statistical concepts and skills have been augmented with practical business examples, scenarios, and exercises. The result is a meaningful understanding of the discipline, which will serve students in their business careers and real-world experiences.

A license is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work. It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one that grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions (definition from Openedefinition.org).

In previous modules we had a chance to discuss the background of open licenses and what they are. We learned that Creative Commons (CC) is the most widely used open license for open educational resources. In this module, we will discuss CC licenses– what they are, to what they pertain, and how to mark our works with them.

Why do open educational resources matter? What is the point of using OER? Below are some of the benefits of using open educational resources that I have seen while working with OER over the past several years.

This book is designed as an OER text and learning resource for undergraduate students enrolled in FN 225 Nutrition at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. The book covers basic nutrition and metabolism, information literacy, energy balance, nutrition across life stages, dietary supplements, an in-depth look at each of the macronutrients, and major functions of vitamins and minerals

COURSE DESCRIPTION: Nutrition is a study of how the body takes in and uses the nutrients from food. Food sources, functions, and requirements of the following are discussed: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water. In addition, digestion, absorption and metabolism of all nutrients are covered. Skills are developed for improving personal eating habits and for evaluating nutrition information in the mass media.

Student Learning Outcomes: Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Define and classify the six classes of nutrients.
2. Identify where the six classes of nutrients are found in foods.

3. Explain how the six classes of nutrients are digested, absorbed, metabolized, and utilized.
4. Distinguish between adequate nutrient intake, deficiencies, and toxicities and how these levels impact body systems and health outcomes.

5. Acknowledge the importance of a moderate approach when it comes to nutrition and weight management, recognizing all foods can fit into a healthful diet.
6. Recognize that nutrition and its effect on our physical body is only one dimension of health and others are equally important, including exercise, sleep, finding purpose, freedom from excessive stress and community relationships.

7. Apply scientific reasoning to evaluate the evidence base and validity of nutrition information in the media.
8. Record and evaluate personal dietary intake using the Recommended Dietary Allowances, Dietary Guidelines, and various food guides and identify behavior change strategies for improvement if necessary.

9. Critically evaluate and compare nutrition labels and determine the nutrient density of each food.
10. Summarize factors that facilitate or constrain lifestyle choices that impact health outcomes.

11. Identify guidelines and recommendations for choosing nutrition supplements and appropriate use.
12. Describe how diet, prior training, duration and intensity of activity impact fuel use before, during, and after exercise.

We intend this book to act as a guide writ large for would-be champions of OER, that anyone—called to action by the example set by our chapter authors—might serve as guides themselves. The following chapters tap into the deep experience of practitioners who represent a meaningful cross section of higher education institutions in North America. It is our hope that the examples and discussions presented by our authors will facilitate connections among practitioners, foster the development of best practices for OER adoption and creation, and more importantly, lay a foundation for novel, educational excellence.

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for increasing equity and access to high-quality K–12 education. Many state education agencies now have offices devoted to identifying and using OERs and other digital resources in their states. To help states, districts, teachers, and other users determine the degree of alignment of OERs to the Common Core State Standards, and to determine aspects of quality of OERs, Achieve has developed eight rubrics in collaboration with leaders from the OER community.

The toolkit is made up of three elements:
1). information and resources to support your evaluation activities
2). an interactive tool to guide you through our Evaluation and Synthesis framework, providing an opportunity to submit findings, observations and links to evidence AND which feeds this back to you for inclusion in your project reporting mechanisms
3). examples of evaluation materials, instruments and reports from other UKOER projects

This Open Educational Resources & Practices Starter Kit is designed to support educators and librarians begin their OER journey of identifying, evaluating, curating, and authoring/remixing.