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Open Educational Resources (OER)

Evaluating OER

Evaluating OER can be time-consuming. It involves comprehensive checks of subject matter, an understanding of course and object alignment, as well as some technical knowledge. This process may involve multiple evaluators (e.g., instructional designers, librarians, SMEs) . Many tools have been developed to help educators with the evaluation process and ensure the OER objects they use and create are accurate and accessible. This page covers questions to ask and tools for help with evaluating OER. 

  • Does the content under consideration cover the subject area appropriately?
  • Is the OER content accurate and free of major errors and spelling mistakes?
  • Can the license of the content be used or altered for the course’s needs?
  • Is the OER clearly written and appropriate for the students’ level of understanding?
  • How accessible is this content? Will it be accessible for your students, or is it too technical? Or is it robust and challenging enough for your students?

adapted from "Evaluate OER" by Abbey Elder, Iowa Stat University Library under 

ALMS Framework

The ALMS Framework

Open licenses provide users with legal permission to engage in the 5R activities, but many open content publishers make technical choices that interfere with a user’s ability to engage in those same activities. 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.

  • Access to Editing Tools: Is the open content published in a format that is revisable by using freely available tools? Will the content run on all major platforms?
  • Level of Expertise Required: Is the open content published in a format that requires a significant amount (e.g., Blender) or a minimum level (e.g., Word) of technical expertise to revise or remix ? 
  • 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)?
  • 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)?

Accessibility Toolkit

BCcampus Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition

This toolkit provides guidance for each content creator to create a open and accessible textbook. Suggestions provided are intended for the non-technical user. Those looking for more technical descriptions about how to make works more accessible, review the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

Here is a link to where you can download this book in another file format. Look for the “Download this book” drop-down menu to select the file type you want. 

WAVE: Web Accessibility Tool

WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool     organization logoimage: © WebAIM [terms]

WAVE is a suite of evaluation tools (WebAim WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool and the WEBAim Color Contrast Checker) developed to help creators make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility errors, but can also facilitate human evaluation of web content. This is valuable when evaluating OER web objects during the curation process and/or during accessibility checks. The tools were developed by WebAIM at Utah State University.  Also visit the Red Rocks Community College Accessibility LibGuide to find more resources for learning about and practicing accessibility.

Achieve OER Evaluation Rubrics Video Series

The Achieve Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects .pdf file is an evaluation rubric system for OER which can be applied across content areas and object types.  Any component that can exist as a stand-alone qualifies as an object.  An object could includes images, applets, lessons, units, assessments. 

This video series gives an overview of the Achieve OER Rubrics.