Why adaptation or adoption?

Many educators feel driven to create the “perfect” resources for their classes and it can be difficult put aside that perfection and use other people’s creations. However, the number, variety, and quality of OER available freely is such that any educator should be able to find resources they can readily (with or without adaptations) put to use within their classrooms. And adaptation or adoption of OER will almost always be more efficient than creating teaching materials from scratch.

Jan M. Pawlowski addressed one of the reasons behind this reluctance in his article, Emotional Ownership as the Key to OER Adoption.

More resources

For more complete information about and instructions on how to adapt an open textbook, please visit the BC Open Textbook Adaptation Guide by BCcampus.

For more complete information about and instruction on how to adopt an open textbook, please visit the BC Open Textbook Adoption Guide by BCcampus.

For a list of open textbooks that have been evaluated and are available for adoption and adaptation, please visit BCcampus’ OpenEd.

Librarians Are Your Friends

When adapting/adopting/creating OER, we need to consider the assistance of librarians. Librarians are qualified to provide the critical judgement of OER. They frequently scrutinize resources for their quality, relevance and licensing agreements. They also teach students and faculty how to determine the quality and relevance of information and to use it properly. Librarians can lead OER initiatives when keeping the following points in mind:

1. There are a few studies which focus on the effect of OER on student learning and their performance.
2. Open textbooks are valued differently than other resources and should be included in most survey courses.
3. OER must go through a quality control process which may take longer than commercial textbooks.
4. The instructional design process will have to be modified when using OER.
5. Faculty will need a lot of time to adopt, adapt and create quality OER.
6. OER may omit many excellent library resources that are free, but not “available in the public domain” (Pierce, 2016, p. 15).
7. Students who do not have good internet connections may have difficulties with using OER.