The Teaching & Learning Center

WCU University Libraries has an OER guide breaking down the process of sourcing an OER that fits your needs and access to additional resources on how to adopt it into your course: Finding and Adopting OER.

Explore some OER Subject Guides to identify available resources you could use in your courses. 23 subjects are listed on the page, along with an “Other” category. The subject guides are taken from MERLOT: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching from California State University Long Beach, the OER Commons from Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), and The Open Textbook Library based in the Center for Open Education in the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development.

If you do not know where to start in creating an OER or do not have the time right now, adapting a preexisting OER/eTextbook to suit your needs can be a great place to start. The Teaching and Learning Center and the University Libraries hope to develop further programing in order to support OER adaptation more wholistically in the future. Additionally, you can follow the Open Education Networks’ Guide Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know (CC BY) that focuses on the following five steps:

1. Check License
2. Identify Format
3. Assess Edit-ability
4. Determine Access
5. Publish Textbook

When adapting an OER, it's important to consider the 5Rs, which enable you to participate in the following actions:

• Retain: the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
• Reuse: the right to use the content in a wide range of ways
• Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
• Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new
• Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, revisions, and remixes with others.

The TLC initially embarked on eTextbook creation with faculty through the eTextbook Initiative, conducted annually with cohorts typically consisting of around five participants. This initiative evolved into PA-ADOPT, which consisted of three separate cohorts involving approximately ten faculty members from four institutions. Both programs focused on training faculty in the development of their own eTextbooks using Apple Pages. Each faculty author cohort participates in a seven-stage process: 

1. Getting Started: project goals and requirements, resources, overview of eBooks and eBook components.
2. Planning and Preparation: audio and video production, using third-party content legally and other legal issues, *Open Educational Resources workshop, inclusive design*, and accessibility.
3. Writing Break: training pauses to allow authors time to write their initial chapter(s) and focus on completing two practice books.
4. Apple Pages: page layout and design, visual effects in Pages, book navigation, common construction issues and incompatibilities, generating the eBook files, submitting a completed chapter for technical review.
5. *Copy Editing/Peer Review: remaining text is copy edited, then peer reviewed using an open peer review process*.
6. Construction and Technical Review: construction of the book is completed and reviewed for layout, technical, and accessibility issues.
7. Final Submission: final technical check is completed, and the book is made available online for general use on the bookshelf.

*Indicates PA-ADOPT specific steps of the process*

While there are presently no available positions for faculty in eTextbook and OER creation, the TLC is actively exploring new avenues to facilitate ongoing faculty engagement in OER creation. To learn more about the eTextbook Initiative read about it on the Faculty Support page, but if you want to get thinking and explore what faculty have done in the past you can browse the eTextbook Initiative Bookshelf and the PA-ADOPT Bookshelf.