OER Guidelines and Research

Why do we need OER policies? United States Capitol and the Senate Building, Washington DC USA

Let’s hear from students at Santa Ana College about why we need OER.

Accessibility

The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) publishes an online reference for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).

The CCC Online Education Initiative (OEI) provides accessibility support both within and outside of Canvas course shells.

BC Open Textbooks has published an Accessibility Toolkit to provide “the resources needed so that each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, teaching assistant, etc. has the opportunity to create a truly open and accessible textbook”. Portland Community College publishes their own Accessibility Handbook.

The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, Division of Academic Affairs maintains a webpage of OER Regulatory References and OER Resources and Tools.

Policy & Guidance

California Community Colleges Board of Governors policy states that educational materials created using funding from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office be made available by the grantee under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

Academic Senate for California Community Colleges supports Open Educational Resources (OER) with an OER Task Force, holding regional meetings, and informational webinars.

References

The California Open Education Resources Council (COERC) is focused on supporting CCC and CSU proposals for College Textbook Act (AB 798) funding.

Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses designed to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use creative work.

Research (Peer-Reviewed Publications)

The Open Education Group publishes research on the impact of OER adoption on a range of educational outcomes and designs and shares methodological and conceptual frameworks for studying the impact of OER adoption.

The OER Hub is situated in the The Open University (OU) in the UK and publishes research on the efficacy of OER.