Research Guides: Workshop: Intro to OER: Using Open Educational Resources @ NJIT: Activities

Sample Syllabi

OER Repositories

Small Collections
Large Collections

OpenStax Foundation covered resource that cost a lot of money to make because they have contributing authors from many institutions like school like MIT and various community colleges. Further, they have a team of peer-reviewers for each textbook behind the creation of it. So there is pre-production, peer-review process much like what is found in scholarly journals. So OpenStax is really trying to ensure the quality of the content immediately. for the web version of an OpenStax book, we can take the link to any chapter and add it to Moodle. You can also download the print version to the book in PDF form that is an in high resolution (for computers and tablets) and low resolution (phones). There is a heading, structure, hierarchy available to them and searchability. But if you want more functionality via a reader, there is a book share version available. For most of the books, you can order a print copy – Openstax has a deal with the National Association of Colleges Stores. You can sell them in the bookstore, that’s not a problem. You could also download an iBooks version of some of these – it’s $5.00 for the iBooks version, it’s a premium version but it may be enhanced by videos and really works well with tablets if you want it.
Open Textbook Library (UMN) Curated collection of open textbooks from across the Internet. Unlike OpenStax which produces their own books, Open Textbook Library is actually bringing them in post-production peer reviewed by their professors and it works out really well. It’s a nice small collection of Open Textbooks.
SUNY Open Textbooks (SUNY) Creating by the State University of New York System. Geared towards those who are interested in writing their own open textbooks. So you have some interesting niche subjects that are coming out of SUNY open textbooks
Washington Open Course Library Most common courses in the Washington State University System – these are all the materials you would need in a Google drive format. So you just go in and the stuff is in a Google folder. You can edit easily

OpenStax CNX OpenStax has a system called CNX –it’s the same thing to that enables you to get to the Web version of the book – people have been able to publish their open textbooks using OpenStax CNX. It’s a little older system but there is a lot of health stuff out there. Link to advances search: https://cnx.org/search
Merlot This is the California State System. They have been doing this since the 1990s. So when you are searching in Merlot, you will be getting textbooks from 2016 all the way back to the early days of the Web. And because of that, this probably should not be the first place to find OER. Going through a smaller curated collection – you might find what you are looking for and that is great. Going through Merlot, you will be inundated with so many resources some of which might be older, expired links. So Merlot is a place you would need to go after you check out the smaller collections.
OER Commons Just like Merlot, OER Commons is a global thing focused on every grade level but not as much higher-ed as Merlot is but covers K-12 to higher-ed, a good mount of web-based stuff and a good creation tool in OER Commons that allows you to make Wordpress style OER on the spot
Galileo Open Learning Materials The virtual library of Georgia. Georgia has a new digital repository that is focused on sharing OERs created by the University system or through their partners such as OpenStax (Galileo is able to share based out of a textbook transformation grant and with University of North Georgia Press)

Copyright Resources

Activity - Using OER Repositories

Using your course syllabus:

a) Try to locate an OER textbook resource using a small OER repository. Were you able to quickly locate a suitable textbook? If not, skip to b).

b) Try to locate an OER textbook resource but this time using a larger OER database. Were you able to quickly find a suitable textbook? If so, what strategy did you use to locate a replacement textbook?

c) Try to locate supplementary material (diagram, video explanation, group exercise) for your course using an OER repository. What types of resources did you notice were available in the repository? Would you incorporate them in your course?

Activity - Using Free Web Search Engines

Q1. Resources on the Web that are free must be checked for:

a) A Creative Commons (or equivalent) license: 1 votes (7.14%)

b) License free label (Public Domain status): 0 votes (0%)

c) Copyright: 2 votes (14.29%)

d) Permissions: 1 votes (7.14%)

e) All of the above: 7 votes (50%)

f) None of the above - no need to check due to fair use privilege as an NJIT faculty member: 3 votes (21.43%)

Total Votes: 14

Answer e) All of the above

Q2. Google Search has a setting to restrict results based on usage rights.

a) True: 9 votes (69.23%)

b) False: 3 votes (23.08%)

c) Depends on the day you search: 1 votes (7.69%)

Total Votes: 13

Exercise: Using your course syllabus and a search engine of your choice, locate a publicly available (non-textbook ) supplementary resource (video, image, webpage...) for your course.

Reviewing the content, do you have any issues preventing you from incorporating this resource in your course?

Activity - Using NJIT Library Resources

Q1. All NJIT Library resources are:

a) Free for reuse by faculty & students: 0 votes (0%)

b) Covered by university-wide licenses: 0 votes (0%)

c) Searchable using the library search tool (library.njit.edu): 0 votes (0%)

d) All of the above: 2 votes (66.67%)

e) All except b: 0 votes (0%)

f) None of the above: 1 votes (33.33%)

g) I don't know: 0 votes (0%)

Total Votes: 3

Answer All of the above

Exercise: Using your course syllabus, utilize the NJIT library search tool (library.njit.edu) to locate relevant resources for your course.

a) Try to locate supplementary material (diagrams, video explanations, group exercises) for your course. What types of resources did you find? Would you incorporate them in your course?

b) Search the Proquest eBook Central database, and locate a replacement textbook. Were you able to locate a suitable replacement? If so, are there any issues preventing you from using the resource?

Workshop: Intro to OER: Using Open Educational Resources @ NJIT

Research & Instruction Librarians