Reviewing existing OER projects and their resources

An important first step in building your own OER initiative is to review sample materials from existing projects. From reviewing these projects you'll be able to view the kinds of materials that are available in OER format and the manner in which they are managed and made available for use and reuse. Specifically, through your review of existing OER projects and their resources, you will be able to better understand a number of important factors, including:

• Scope of existing educational resources
• Quality of existing materials
• The manner in which OERs are made available on the web 
• Forms and formats of existing resources, including their CC licenses
• Potential for reuse and remixing existing resources in your context 

From your review of existing OER projects and materials you will be in a stronger position to implement your own OER strategy.

Taking a closer look at OER projects

In this section you'll take a closer look at open educational resources from some well-known OER projects. You'll also examine more general OER search engines that can look across the Internet for OER and CC-licensed courses and resources from many different academic and NGO sources.

Activity: An in-depth look at existing OER initiatives

First, explore in depth the following sources of OER materials. Use Google Docs to keep your notes. Create a table like the one below.

Activity: Using a more generic search engine to find useful OER

Two interesting search engines are available that make use of Google tools to look for open educational resources. One is from Commonwealth of Learning. The other is provided by BCcampus.   Try each one to assess the kinds of materials that the search engine can find that might suit your needs for courses or teaching resources.

Try each of these search engines to determine whether they can find OER or open textbooks that would be valuable in your context.