4 Environmental Scan
The next step in your OER journey is to begin to translate your vision into an action plan — a roadmap for part or all of your project!
This process will begin with an environmental scan to help you find existing resources you can adopt, recognize opportunities to adapt existing content, and/or identify gaps that will require the creation of new open content. Since unstructured searching can often lead you down a rabbit hole, we are going to embark on a focused exploration process of existing resources with efficient and effective search and evaluation strategies.
However, despite being a focused and structured process, there will be plenty of opportunities to be inspired! We encourage you to keep an open mind as you journey, to embrace new ideas and approaches, and to continue to think about the learners who will eventually use these OERs.
The environmental scan process is a time-consuming one. So, this part of the OER Incubator will span weeks 2 and 3.
Over the next two weeks, you will
- review effective OER search strategies
- explore multiple OER repositories for discipline-specific resources
- evaluate OERs using prioritized criteria
- begin to create an OER plan
- contribute to our OER Incubator sharing space
Creative Commons licensing
Creative Commons Licences are the open licences that you are most likely to encounter in your OER quest. Before you begin searching, take some time to complete our Creative Commons quick-start guide as an introduction or review!
Basic search strategies
Before we jump right into searching for OERs and open content, you might want to take a few minutes to review some basic search strategies!
We have provided you with an optional Savvy Searching chapter. Even if all you do is watch the 3 minute video at the bottom of the Savvy Searching page, it will make you a better content explorer!
Finding & evaluating OER
The bulk of the work for this week and next will revolve around finding and evaluating OERs, and strategies to help you do both.
There is no “one-stop-shop” for OERs, so you need to look in multiple places. The good news is, there are several curated OER repositories that have organized content for you to search. Many of these resources have also been peer reviewed and even rated by other users. You’ll find a list of open repositories in Your OER Quest activity.
Finding OERs
Here are some handy tips to keep in mind as you begin searching for OERs
- Start with open repositories, “shop around,” and keep coming back! Make sure to access different repositories, and continue checking them because they are always growing and being updated.
- Use Boolean operators. Not sure what those are? Check out the Savvy Searching module!
- Use filters within the repositories to find more relevant results (e.g. filter the results by license, type of material, etc.)
- Switch up your search terms! Come up with a list of keywords and try them out
- Look for smaller pieces of content as opposed to complete resources (e.g. consider topics, chapters, or ancillary materials instead of a finished textbook)
- Pay attention to the open license so you know how you can use the material you find
- Keep track of information as you search! Check out our OER Curator if you need a guide
- Know when to stop searching! Sometimes the perfect OER just doesn’t exist, and that’s okay. Now you can think about creating the missing component that you need, or using a library resource
- When in doubt, ask a librarian!!
Evaluating OERs
The OER evaluation process might seem intimidating, especially if you’re new the open resources. It can help to start with the familiar, and treat OERs like you would any other teaching resource! When you are evaluating a resource to use in your teaching, open or not, what criteria do you consider?
Knowing your personal evaluation criteria is an excellent starting point, but there are some evaluation criteria that are unique to OERs.
As you find existing openly licensed content that you are interested in adapting or integrating into your own OER, consider the following review criteria. Does anything in particular grab your attention? What evaluation criteria will be critical for your OER?
Your responsibilities
As always, the faculty member who is selecting the content has to take responsibility for making sure that it is appropriate to the audience and learning objectives, correct and accurate, accessible and usable, and so on. The educator as content expert has always been expected to be vigilant with educational resources, even ones that come from traditionally authoritative sources.
OERs can fall short of formally published educational materials in terms of their level of polish, but you don’t have to just deal with it. You can tweak and polish them until they fit perfectly. That is not something that is possible with traditionally published educational materials, which are copyrighted and often have DRM (digital rights management).