Instructional design/Leveraging OER in Your Design/Current OER
There are many Open Education Resources available for instructional designers to pull from and utilize; however, the trick is finding the right one for the lesson you are developing. To be able to do this, you must be familiar with the current landscape of OERs. Below is a short list of commonly used OERs, along with the pros and cons of each.
| OER | Description | Link (CTRL+Click) |
|---|---|---|
| CK-12 | This example is an open resource which is meant for the K-12 educational classroom environment. It's goal is to help teachers to provide more individualized instruction to their students based on specific needs and the students' own unique personalities. They pair high-quality content to the latest technology. The site offers interactive learning activities like simulations and PLIX, classes and study groups based on concepts, quizzes designed to both provide an individual path of learning as well as instant feedback, praise, and encouragement. | http://www.ck12.org/ |
| Lumen Learning Open Course Catelog | Lumen is an open resource which was co-founded by David Wiley. It provides detailed designed lessons for a wide range of topics for college-age and adult learners. You can search by either subject or degree selection throughout the site. Courses can come from Lumen or from colleges and organizations, and provide videos from live classrooms as part of the content as well as an easily navigational table of contents in the beginning of the lesson. A disadvantage is that the courses are not as technologically advanced as CK-12. | https://courses.candelalearning.com/catalog/lumen |
| Andy Schmitz Archive | This open resource is an archive of mostly entry-level college textbooks from a non-specified publisher who, until the end of 2012, licensed all of their textbooks under the Creative Commons license. It was created by Andy Schmitz. The idea is that anyone can download these resources whenever needed, as well as make modifications as long as the authors contribute their modifications to the Creative Commons license. The textbooks can be read online or downloaded and printed. A drawback is that the last published date of the textbook would be 2012, and any modifications can be made by anyone when updating the information through the years. | http://2012books.lardbucket.org/ |
| Carnegie Melon- Open Learning Initiative | Open Learning Initiative was started by Carnegie Melon University to provide interative online courses to anyone wanting and willing to learn. It provides both college-level courses, introductory courses in the sciences, and elementary courses in language development. The courses are designed by data-backed course developers, and the courses themselves serve as part of the education research for Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. Teachers can have students take full courses within the site, and OLI will provide student data directly to the instructor. | http://oli.cmu.edu/teach-with-oli/ |
| MIT Open Course | This resource is one of the first open resources which made courses available to the public. It holds both undergraduate and graduate level courses. One of the issues is that the courses seem to not be completely up to date, many with the original instruction year dating well before 2016. | http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/ |
Let's Practice
editLet's test your knowledge on what you just learned over each OER.
As soon as you get all greens, you have completed the lesson.
Author: Lindsay Gerling-Nentrup