When considering sharing your own digital resources as OER, you might be sharing something you have created or identified as shareable from your own resources. Creating OERs allows you to:
- Showcase your expertise in a particular subject area
- Share teaching resources with your peers and with the world
- Improve the quality of the student learning experience
If you are a member of GCU staff, you are supported in your creation of OER by the GCU Interim OER policy.
Alternatively, you might have used and modified or ‘remixed’ an existing OER.
Remixing is an important concept in both OER and OEP. It relates not only to what is sometimes called ‘localisation’ including minor changes such as references to the country or subject in which it is being used, but to broader changes such as adaptation for cultural differences, disciplinary differences or pedagogical distinctions which are important in your teaching. Remixing might involve adding annotations to an existing resource, combining existing resources in a new structure, rebuilding a course through reorganisation of OER, or even blending open textbooks. Keep in mind also that students could be remixing – this might form the basis of a collaborative activity as part of your teaching.
Please note that this section deals with remixing OER in general. You can refer to the later drop down section 'Adapting/creating open textbooks' for issues specific to textbooks.
Remix resources
When it comes time to license your resource, you will probably spend most of your time deciding on the appropriate CC licence to assign; the actual steps involved in adding the licence to your resource are straightforward. Once you have chosen a CC licence, you simply go to the Creative Commons website to create the licence, then download the CC licence image to use on your resource. This section deals with the important process of choosing a CC licence for your work.
Below is a summary of key considerations when choosing a CC licence in order to create your own OER. It is also advisable to consult colleagues in your institutional library and/or teaching and learning centre to discuss your choice of licence. And for all in higher education in Ireland, the National Forum short guide How to Choose an Open License summarises key considerations and the National Forum is available for consultation.
Choosing a CC licence
If you have not already reviewed the various CC licences in the earlier section, Using OER and 'Creative Commons for open licensing', you may wish to do that now. There are six standard Creative Commons licences (seven if the CC0 Public Domain licence is included). The four CC licences most widely used in education are the following:
NC and ND licence considerations
NC: Three of the six CC licences include the ‘NC’ or Non-Commercial licence element (CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND). Apart from the original copyright holder, those who use OER with NC licences may not charge for access to the work. This exclusion of users who may charge for access means that many OER creators are inclined to choose NC licences. However, there are often unforeseen limitations of ‘NC’ licences that are worth considering. For example, it is not possible to include or remix NC-licensed content in OER that are shared under more permissive licenses, such as CC BY or CC BY-SA. These incompatibilities mean that NC-licensed resources cannot be included in Wikipedia or Wikimedia (both use the CC BY-SA licence) nor in many open educational resources and collections that are licensed with more permissive licences such as CC BY.
ND: Two of the six CC licences include the ‘ND’ or No Derivatives licence element (CC BY-ND and CC BY NC-ND). Resources with these licences can be shared, but only if they remain unchanged. According to the terms of an ND licence, the resource must be used in its entirety: it cannot be cropped; it cannot be translated into another language; it cannot be corrected or updated; it cannot be modified or remixed in any way. ND licences allow resources to be shared and distributed, either on their own or in larger collections, as long as they are reproduced in an unaltered fashion. If you wish to remix content that has an ND licence, you must ask permission from the licence holder.
Overall, it can be helpful to ask yourself: how might someone wish to use this resource? In other words, think of yourself as a potential user of your OER:
- Will you permit modification, translation and/or remix of your OER? (if so, avoid the use of ND licences)
- Will you permit others to charge for access if they reuse your OER, eg including your resource in a textbook that is not open? (if so avoid the use of NC licences)
- Will you limit use of your OER only to those who will use the same Share Alike licence? (if so, use an SA licence)
- Would you like your OER to be available for remix and inclusion as part of others’ open resources that use the least restrictive licences (eg CC BY)? (if so, avoid the use of ND, NC and SA licences)
Finally, it is also important to think about the nature of the OER you plan to share. Two key aspects are the level and granularity of the resource.
Level: Is the resource widely applicable? If so, it would be helpful to use the most permissive licence possible. On the other hand, if there are particular sensitivities regarding the content, you may decide to assign a more restrictive licence.
Granularity: Smaller “chunks” of content are best shared with the most open licence possible. How granular is your content (eg infographic, assignment, lesson, textbook)? Large OER such as open courses can be thought of as OER collections: if it is not possible for the entire collection to have a CC BY licence, for example, individual elements within the course can be assigned more open licences so that they can be more freely reused by others.
In this section, we focus on how to share an OER you have created or remixed.
We encourage GCU staff creating OER creators to add their resources to edShare@GCU. EdShare@GCU is a repository for the GCU community. It allows staff to store, share and preserve a wide variety of learning and teaching materials in one central location.
You could also consider sharing to a well-known platform such as OER Commons.
Additionally, you may also wish to share via other well-known sites, particularly if you are already accustomed to using these:
Adapting an open textbook
Many educators choose not only to use open textbooks, but to adapt them for their specific teaching contexts. Your reasons for choosing to adapt an open textbook may include some of the following (list adapted from Why Remix an Open Educational Resource?, Green-Hughes, 2009):
- Correct errors or inaccuracies
- Update the book to add more recent material
- Adapt the material to make it more accessible/inclusive
- Adapt the book for a different audience or teaching situations
- Add culturally specific references
- Translate it into another language
- Insert more media or links to other resources
- Enable students to edit or add to the book
- Chop the book into smaller chunks that might be easier to learn from, or could be reused elsewhere.
The following is a list of considerations before starting the adaptation process:
- Check the license of the book you wish to adapt to see what type of reuse is permissible. For example, an open textbook shared under a Creative Commons ND (No Derivatives) license can be reused, but you cannot translate or adapt it in any way
- Check the technical format of the book you wish to adapt. You will need the source files if you plan to do a major modification of the book. Avoid PDF documents, if possible, as these are not editable and need to be converted (this can be extremely time consuming). Look for HTML files; Word, OpenOffice or Google docs; text, ePub or LaTex files
- Think about your final publication format. Most students will be happy with a PDF document, others may prefer a website version of the book, while others may prefer ePub or print. If you can, try to make your book available in a number of different formats
- Save your source material to release with the book, to facilitate the ability to remix your work. For example, if you create a textbook in Word and then convert to PDF to distribute, you can also make the Word document available so that someone who may want to make a copy of your book and modify it for their needs can do so
- Keep it simple, especially if you are approaching a remix project for the first time. While it may be tempting to make a number of major changes to a textbook before releasing it to your students, think of the textbook as a living resource that you can improve over time.
Tools for adapting or creating an open textbook
The tools you use to make or adapt an open textbook will depend greatly on the editable format you are working with (if you are adapting a textbook) as well as your comfort level in working with the particular format.
PressBooks is recommended by most open textbook platforms. PressBooks is a web-based authoring tool based on the popular WordPress authoring platform. Working in PressBooks is similar to working within a VLE. You can import a number of different formats into PressBooks for editing, including Word, ePub and HTML. PressBooks will output the textbook as a mobile-friendly website, an ePub document (for use in e-readers), and PDF (for printing). You can try Pressbooks for free if your institution does not have a licence.
This helpful table from the BCCampus Adaptation Guide (BCCampus, CC BY) shows you some of the tool options for working with the various file formats. This is not an exhaustive list; you may have other tools that work for you that you wish to use to create your open textbook.
| Original format | Possible editing tools (web-based) | Possible editing tools (desktop) |
|---|
| Word or OpenOffice | Google Docs, PressBooks | Microsoft Word, OpenOffice |
| ePub | PressBooks | Sigil, Calibre |
| Text | Google Docs, PressBooks | Word, OpenOffice |
| LaTex | ShareLaTeX/OverLeaf | TeXworks, Texmaker |
| HTML | Google Docs, PressBooks, MediaWiki | Dreamweaver, MS Expression Web |
Using a mapping template is recommended; you can find an example from Jefferson Community College.
Distributing your open textbook (to your students and others)
Once you have created/adapted an open textbook you will be able to download copies and upload to your VLE. It is also important to make the new/adapted version of your open textbook findable by others. If your institution has a subscription to Pressbooks, students will be able to access the open textbook through the institutional platform or library catalogue. You can also add your open textbook to open libraries and repositories, for example:
- Your institutional repository (for GCU staff, edShare@GCU)
- A disciplinary repository
- Your library’s Libguides
You might also consider adding your open textbook to an open platform such as:
- OER Commons allows you to create directly on the platform (using OpenAuthor) or host files from your own computer
- Open Textbook Library
- MERLOT allows the creation of OER and can also host external files
- Wikibooks allows you to modify open textbooks within the platform or create new wiki textbooks
Finding out more
Adaptation Guide: A reference to adapting or revising an open textbook (CC BY) was created by BCCampus to support modification of an open textbook. A further useful resource by the Open Education Network is Modifying an Open Textbook: What you need to know.
Making Open Textbooks: A video guide (CC BY) is a series of 10 short videos created by Rebus Community, describing everything from building a team, content creation, peer review, to release and adoption.
A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students (CC BY), with contributions from over a dozen educators, is a helpful handbook for those interested in engaging with students to create open textbooks (ie a powerful example of Using OEP).
Research on the use and reuse of open textbooks includes Open Textbooks: A balance between empowerment and disruption (Algers, 2019, CC BY) and Examining the Reuse of Open Textbooks (Hilton, Wiley & Lutz, 2012, CC BY).
