Open Educational Resources are powerful tools for enhancing teaching and learning, and their creation and adaptation are more straightforward than you might think. The beauty of OERs lies in their flexibility. They can be modified, expanded, or reduced to fit the specific needs of your course and your students. This adaptability allows you to tailor your teaching materials to your educational objectives.
Creating an OER is not a daunting task. Many platforms provide user-friendly interfaces that make the process of creating and sharing educational resources as simple as writing a blog post. You can incorporate a variety of multimedia elements such as text, images, audio, and video to make the content more engaging. Learn more about tools you can use to create and adapt OERs on the Platforms and Tools page of this guide.
Moreover, there are numerous existing OER available on various subjects that you can use as a starting point. You can take these resources and modify them to suit your needs, saving you the time and effort of creating course materials from scratch.
Explore the world of OERs and find one to adapt on the Find page of this guide.
When you create an OER, you’re not just creating resources for your students; you’re contributing to a global community of educators committed to open access and innovation in education. Your work could benefit teachers and students around the world.
Looking to create, adapt or revise an OER and not sure where to begin? Explore all the supports Seneca has to offer below, and be sure to connect with Michael Myers the Digital Literacies and Open Educational Resources Librarian to get started!
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Seneca has a subscription to Pressbooks, which allows faculty to easily create OERs either from scratch or by importing content from other servers, such as Microsoft word. Faculty can also easily adapt pre-existing OERs in Pressbooks by simply cloning the book and making the necessary changes (be sure to check the OER license to ensure adapting the OER is allowed). Check out this guide on Pressbooks to learn more! |
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For technical support with Pressbooks, H5P, or other OER tools and platforms schedule a consultation with Michael Myers, the Digital Literacies and Open Education Librarian. |
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Be sure to check out our guide on Copyright to learn all about the fair use of content, adapting work, and applying Creative Commons Licenses to your own works! For Copyright and License support schedule a consultation with Michelle Gonzales, the Copyright Librarian. |
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There are many aspects and facets of Accessibility that effect online resources, and it is crucial that OERs adhere to these standards. You can learn more about accessibility from Accessibility at Seneca, and from Teaching & Learning. |
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Use Seneca Libraries' OER repository to explore OERs currently used at Seneca, there might already be an OER that you can use in your class, or you might want to adapt one for your own use. If you create or adapt an OER for use at Seneca be sure to submit it to the repository! |
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Teaching & Learning offers a lot of support for the creation, adaption, or revision of Open Education resources. Check out their website to learn more about accessibility, tools, grants, and even graphic/instructional design support! |
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The Learning Portal offers a lot of support for the creation, adaption, or revision of Open Education resources. Check out their website to explore their OER toolkit! |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.