4 OER at Western
As an instructor at Western, you have access to a number of different resources to help you create different types of Open Educational Resources.
Open Textbooks
Pressbooks
For Western instructors interested in creating their own Open Textbook, an excellent resource is the eCampusOntario Pressbooks platform. All eCampusOntario member institutions have access to this platform to adapt and create their own open textbooks. Through this platform, Western instructors have access to a Pressbooks environment which will also allow for creation and embedding of interactive components (using H5P) and use of hypothes.is for collaborative note taking.
More information about Pressbooks can be found here: https://pressbooks.com/
Other Platforms
Open Access Scholarly Publishing
For Western instructors who are working on scholarly publishing, there are Open Access options available. Open access is a principle by which scholarly content is purposely made available online, free of charge, and with minimal copyright and licensing restrictions.
For help with Open Access scholarly publishing at Western, see https://www.lib.uwo.ca/scholarship/openaccess.html.
OWL and OER
Western instructors can also use Western’s learning management system (LMS), OWL, to create, host, and link to OER. Some of the tools available in OWL include:
- Lessons
- a tool that allows an instructor to organize resources, activities, and media on a single page
- allows for embedded media such as images, audio and video
- instructors can also add interactive quiz questions, task checklists, and selectively released content (content that is only released when a student has successfully completed other tasks)
- Resources
- a tool that allows instructors to use an organized folder structure to share a wide variety of file types with students
- content can be PDF, Word, PPT, audio, video and weblinks
- Web Content
- a tool that allows instructors to add external web links as a menu item in their OWL course sites
- Course Readings
- a tool that links to the Course Readings service offered by Western Libraries which is a personalized service that allows instructors to make supplementary content available to students
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Other Low Cost Options to Supplement OER
Course Readings
In some cases, instructors may be looking for alternatives to high-priced textbooks to provide a variety of content to students. Western Library provides the Course Readings service to both manage and consolidate a variety of different types of content into one access point. This content may be OER or may be content provided through subscriptions that Westerns has access to or through copyrighted material provided through fair dealings provisions.
