This training content has been structured to be flexible and adaptable depending on your needs as a learner or facilitator. Each chapter contains:

• Learning objectives
• Narrative content (and links to external resources)
• Formative practice/assessments at the lesson level
• An end-of-chapter summative assessment

The learning objectives and their complementary summative assessment are the most crucial parts of the training. The narrative content has been included as a way to bring newcomers up to speed quickly, and to serve as a reference for those already working with OER. In reality, a variety of learning content and experiences working with OER may have adequately prepared you to complete the assessments and meet the objectives.

The learning objectives for each lesson have been derived from existing OER training materials by Kapi’olani Community College, Leeward Community College, and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. We expect this training to grow and adapt as the needs of faculty and staff at UH change — this is a set of living documents.

 

Sharing back OER that you have created or used  is an important part of the content life cycle. The UH system institutional repository (IR) has a section specifically devoted to hosting OER used by UH faculty, staff, and students, in which we encourage you to deposit open content there. If it has an open license and has been considered or implemented for instructional purposes at UH, we want it in our IR.

Upload Process

The process for submitting content to the UH OER Repository has been documented in the following guide:

UH OER Repository Info

The uploading process consists of two parts:

• Preparing your content for submission
• Submitting your content to the repository

Preparing Content for the OER Repository

As you prepare to submit content, you will need to do the following:

• Locate the appropriate repository Sub-community or Collection
• Locate relevant keywords and other metadata to your submission
• Gather all files needed for the submission
• Select the appropriate Creative Commons (CC) license for the submission

All of above important information and metadata will be required by the submission form, so it’s best to get these things together ahead of time.

Submitting Content to the OER Repository

The actual submission process includes the following:

• Create a new submission in the UH OER Repository
• Place the content in an appropriate Sub-community or Collection
• Include descriptive metadata in the submission form
• Check the status of a completed submission

Submissions to the OER repository are moderated to ensure that accurate metadata is a part of all uploads. Over time, the pool of UH OER will grow to include hundreds or thousands of titles, all available for reuse by UH faculty and beyond.

Share Your Submission

For benchmark completion of this chapter, please notify us of your deposit by filling out this form:

https://goo.gl/forms/3LZQGwgahii3xbQD2

(Note: You will need to share your submission link, so don’t close your browser tab before completing the form!)

Introduction

It is often said that OER are, “free like puppies,” implying that there may be no up front costs, but that OER require care and attention to be happy. We can safely assume that having some knowledge pet care would help us better care for our puppy. Analogies aside, your effectiveness working with OER and advising others in their work will depend on having basic knowledge of common instructional design practices and being able to work with digital media files.

This section will offer basic guidance in understanding the technical side and workflow processes for developing OER.

The ALMS framework

As David Wiley explains on the opencontent.org definition page, CC licenses give us permissions to exercise the 5 R’s (reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, retain), but poor technical choices can make open content less open (and thus, harder to work with).

The ALMS Framework provides a way of thinking about those technical choices and understanding the degree to which they enable or impede a user’s ability to engage in the 5R activities permitted by open licenses.

The framework includes four buckets (or whichever your preferred container is) that questions about the technical openness of an OER likely fit into. Here are the descriptions of each bucket.

(This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/)

Access to Editing Tools

Is the open content published in a format that can only be revised or remixed using tools that are extremely expensive (e.g., 3DS MAX)? Is the open content published in an exotic format that can only be revised or remixed using tools that run on an obscure or discontinued platform (e.g., OS/2)? Is the open content published in a format that can be revised or remixed using tools that are freely available and run on all major platforms (e.g., OpenOffice)?

Takeaway: Can you edit the OER without the need for specialized or expensive tools?

Level of Expertise Required

Is the open content published in a format that requires a significant amount technical expertise to revise or remix (e.g., Blender)? Is the open content published in a format that requires a minimum level of technical expertise to revise or remix (e.g., Word)?

Takeaway: Would most faculty be able to edit the OER at their current skill level?

Meaningfully Editable

Is the open content published in a manner that makes its content essentially impossible to revise or remix (e.g., a scanned image of a handwritten document)? Is the open content published in a manner making its content easy to revise or remix (e.g., a text file)?

Takeaway: Can all parts of the OER be edited?

Self-Sourced

It the format preferred for consuming the open content the same format preferred for revising or remixing the open content (e.g., HTML)? Is the format preferred for consuming the open content different from the format preferred for revising or remixing the open content (e.g. Flash FLA vs SWF)?

Takeaway: Can you edit the OER directly or is a separate editable file needed?

Using the ALMS framework

Like with any framework or set of guidelines, the usefulness of the ALMS framework vary. At the very least it is important to understand the kind of technical aspects to be aware of when considering which OER can be easily incorporated into your work. Here is an example of a simple application of the ALMS framework on an OER in the UH OER repository:

Writing for Success https://dspace.lib.hawaii.edu/handle/10790/3180

Go ahead and take a look at the item record. You’ll see the persistent identifier (for citation purposes), the license on the content, ownership metadata, and more. If the content has been uploaded in multiple formats, each of these will be presented to you here.

But how technically open is it? Which file format do we want to download?

The ALMS framework applied to this work in a way that helps us understand the technical openness of this OER might look somethings like this:

---

Access to editing tools: The content is available in PDF, which isn’t usually editable without Adobe Acrobat Pro. But there is an ePub version that can be ingested by Pressbooks as well as edited with open source tools like Calibre. The PDF could also be scraped (copied from the screen) and pasted into a simpler format such as a Word document, which could be very time consuming. So, we can say that the basic editing tools are available at no or low cost.

Level of expertise required: Editing this OER in Pressbooks or Calibre would require some knowledge of HTML, the markup formatting used for content on the Web. Additionally, editing this book may require file management as the chapters exist as separate files in the ePub or HTML version. If the content were placed in a Word file (as mentioned above), editing could be simplified further.

Meaningfully editable: The OER content is fairly flat (primarily text, no embedded media) and all content appears to be editable. There aren’t any features I would be concerned about being able to edit.

Self-sourced: The ePub file is self-sourced, so at minimum we have one read-and-edit file available to us.

---

When in doubt about the effort required to edit an OER you find, it may be worth searching the Web for other copies or instances of the OER that have been converted to a friendlier file format. For instance, many of the OpenStax OER textbooks have been ported into Pressbooks so that they can be easily edited and then exported to a variety of formats.

Knowledge Check

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Introduction

Content should be created in a way that makes it accessible to all learners. As you plan an OER adoption or adaptation, plan to check the accessibility of your content before making it available to others. Not only is this a generally good practice, content published by public institutions may be subject to state and/or federal mandates for accessibility. In short, making your OER accessible from the get-go will help learners consume the content in the way that best suits their needs.

This section will explain techniques towards making instructional content more accessible, including OER. More thorough recommendations for making content accessible can be found in this adaptation of the Accessibility Toolkit originally published by BCCampus.

Lowest common denominator

While it is often fun to use different font types (“fonts”), colors, and clip art on your instructional materials, content that follows a more structured approach will likely be more accessible. As OER is passed between authors and editing tools, it’s advisable to leave the fancy styling as a last step and share out “clean” versions of the content without custom fonts and floating elements. When in doubt, leave your custom styles out.

Four steps towards authoring accessible content

When writing text-based content, sticking to these four suggestions will greatly improve the accessibility of your content. In particular using stricter markup will help screen readers convey the content more clearly. MS Word, Google Docs, and many other common tools used for OER editing will have these built in into their menus, making it easy to structure your content cleanly.

Use heading levels (h1, h2, h3)

Text-based OER benefits from being structured with heading levels. Many editing tools support TOC (table of contents) generation based on where these section markers are placed. Individuals using screen readers will also more easily navigate the sections of your content when headings levels have been applied consistently throughout.

Use true lists (ordered, unordered)

While they may “look” similar to bulleted lists, using asterisks with hand-spacing to create lists can really jam up a screen reader that is expecting structured content. Whenever listing items, use the true list features of your content editor. This applies to both unordered (often bulleted) and ordered (numbered or lettered) lists.

Example  — clear and accessible:

• First list item
• Second one
• And a third

Nonexample  — unclear:

*  First list item

*  Second item

*   And a third

Give alt text descriptions to images

No matter the subject of an image or figure used in your content, we need to offer descriptive text to support those with visual impairments. A screen reader will look for a contextual description of an image to share with the learner, which should live in the text surrounding the image (title or caption) or as alternative (“alt”) text. This is one of the most common overlooked accessibility aspects of content created for instruction, but editors for both online and offline content nearly all include tools for adding alt text to images.

Use descriptive link text

Ensure that all web pages and weblinks have titles that describe a topic or purpose. The purpose of the link can be determined by the text alone. That is, you don’t need to include additional information justifying the use of the link. You want the link to be meaningful in context. For example, do not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more” unless the purpose of the link can be determined by meaning in the surrounding content.

Example  — clear and accessible:

Information on the BC Open Textbook Project is available online.

Nonexample  — unclear:

Click here for information on the BC Open Textbook Project.

Use the WAVE tool

A great deal of OER content is displayed on websites, where we can use accessibility-checking tools to identify areas that can make it difficult for assistive technology tools to work properly. The WAVE tool does just that: identifies errors and possible issues with the accessibility of webpages.

For example, we can see the WAVE tool’s accessibility check on opencontent.org/definition. As far as content structure and formatting is concerned, the page looks great. The WAVE tool caught a couple small errors (a missing page title, missing language declaration) and had a couple warnings for parts of the page that may be troublesome from an accessibility perspective.

Knowledge Check

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Introduction

Each OER project is different, and rarely is an OER adoption a turn-key process. While OER textbooks exist for many high-enrollment courses taught at higher education institutions, the pedagogical design (or teaching style) and student population will vary.

Still, we can look to instructional design frameworks to understand what it takes to adapt or create OER content to suit a course or learning experience. The following OER production framework represents the major steps that OER adoptions and creations typically go through.

Earlier draft (w/comments): go.hawaii.edu/jZC

Current version: go.hawaii.edu/WZj

Priming phase

At this step, we begin by asking a few key questions to gauge the OER knowledge and skills of those who are interested in taking on a project. Have you explored OER content in your subject area? Have you been though any previous training for work with OER in the past? If not, direction to training resources and the appropriate support staff is the next step, unless the person is confident that they can jump right in and begin working.

Pre-production phase

This phase involves the curation of existing resources that may be applicable to the OER adoption as well as using planning documents to get an idea of what would be involved in the project. No new content should be adapted in this step, but a skeleton outline and other time-and-task-based project management documents should be prepared.

Design phase

This step is the last planning phase before work on the actual OER content begins. Project outlines and skeleton documents are fleshed out, and existing OER are fit into places where they are believed to be applicable. Any visual/graphic design work and processes that require assistance from an instructional designer are included here.

Development phase

This phase deserves an entire workflow of its own, simple because this is where the most time is spent on OER projects. Existing OER that are being adapted or modified go through revision and review in a closed loop until they are in a place where they require only minor changes or copyedits. Checks for intellectual property (which CC license is on the content, and have we appropriately attributed everything?) are done, as well as checks for accessibility (is content semantically formatted, images including alt-text, etc)? Content here is typically drafted in Google Docs or another rich content editor (Word, OpenOffice) and are then ported into the publishing platform (Pressbooks for UH).

Publishing phase

The final phase involves the “publishing” aspects including creating export versions, archiving the editable files (.doc, .xml, etc) and delivery format (PDF, eBook) in the institutional repository. The new adapted or original OER content is then disseminated to learners and shared our with the open community.

 

At the end of most sections you will find embedded knowledge checks. Your completion of the practice will be recorded when you are signed into the book.

Each of the three chapters also ends with a benchmark activity that allows you to demonstrate the basic skills and knowledge about OER that you’ve acquired. By chapter, here are the benchmarks:

1. Find relevant OER content
2. Upload an OER to the UH OER Repository
3. Create an OER adoption or creation plan

Each benchmark requires that you submit evidence of your learning to a Google form, linked from this book.