Introduction

This capability toolkit has been designed to equip instructors with the skills they need to confidently find, use, or even create open educational resources (OER). To do this, the book has been broken up into five major parts covering important aspects of working with OER.

Part 1

This part defines open education and open educational resources (OER), highlighting the case for their use and the benefits for both students and teachers. It outlines the key themes of the open education movement and explains the 5R characteristics of OER. Drawing on relevant literature on the history of open education, the part then explores OER enabled pedagogy and the role of co-creation in open educational practice.  Finally, it invites you to explore how you might become involved in the OER movement by reviewing the Cape Town 10 themes. The content of this part has been taken from multiple sources, adapted specifically for the Australian context.

Part 2

This part is partially derived from “Texas Learn OER” by Carrie Gits. It includes other content adapted for the Australian context where possible, licensed under CC BY 4.0. This part distinguishes between public domain, open licences and all rights reserved for the purpose of copyright in the Australian context. It covers the Statutory Educational licence and how it is applied at RMIT University. Finally, it covers understanding Creative Commons licensing and how it can be applied when using others’ works or creating your own, enabling the application of these concepts to the following parts.

Part 3

Content for this part was primarily derived from “Identifying, Finding and Adopting OER” by Mike Daly and Phylise Banner, SUNY OER Services, from “Adoption Guide” by Lauri M. Aesoph, BCcampus Open Education, and from “Module 9: Accessibility” by Open Washington, all licensed under CC BY 4.0. Topics covered include locating and evaluating OER resources, adopting and adapting them for reuse, and ensuring chosen resources are accessible to users. Short quizzes are included to check reader understanding.

Part 4

This part focuses on the processes for creating, adapting and remixing OER. It looks at examples of OER created at RMIT University and other institutions, and how you can share your OER once it is complete.   Content is mainly derived from BCcampus, as well as Smartcopying,  Open Educational Licensing, and the CAUL Publishing Workflow. 

Part 5
This part is derived from “The OER Starter Kit” by Abbey Elder, Iowa State University, licensed under CC BY 4.0. In addition, content has been derived from Getting Started with Open Educational Resources by Mahrya Burnett, Jenay Solomon, and Heather Healy, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and OER & Open Pedagogy Community of Practice by lkunspsccedu, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This part focuses on open pedagogy, inclusivity and diversity. Where applicable, examples of inclusive open practices from RMIT University and universities in Australia are provided. Links to the Library’s Open Publishing team appear throughout this part to assist educators further. An H5P activity at the end of the part is included, facilitating a starting point for educators when considering inclusion, diversity and open assessment in their course curriculum.