Open Educational Resources (OER) Sustainable Learning

Take the course now!

To be eligible for the stipend after completing this course your proposal must:

• be for a course at HSU and you must be a Humboldt State University faculty member
• save students money (replace a textbook or other materials that students have to pay to access)
• be for a different course if you've previously participated in AL$. 

If you are already using "free", but not open educational resources as course materials please contact us to discuss eligibility by emailing oer@humboldt.edu before completing this course.

The HSU Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) Team has developed a Canvas course designed to teach you everything you need to know to get started implementing open education resources (OER) into your own classroom.

By the end of the course you should be able to:

• Define and identify open educational resources (OER).
• Explain terms like copyright, fair use, Creative Commons licensing, public domain and how to use/adapt/attribute/apply open licensed works.
• Identify and evaluate OER that could be used in your course.
• Create and adapt OER for your course.
• Apply accessibility, equity, diversity, inclusion and universal design for learning (UDL) best practices to OER.
• Create a proposal to implement OER into your class.

The course itself is broken down into 4 modules.

• In Module 1, you will learn how to explain what OER is as well as why you might use it. You will also learn how to decipher the different creative commons licenses and how they connect to OER.
• In Module 2, you will learn how to navigate the web for OER. This includes knowing where to look, how to find what you're looking for, and how to evaluate it.
• In Module 3, you will learn the basics on how to build your own OER materials.
• In Module 4, you will learn how to make your online learning spaces (including the OER they may adopt) more accessible by applying concepts of Universal Design.

After you complete this course, you will apply your new knowledge and skills to develop a plan to adopt or create OER for one of your courses. To be eligible for the course stipend you must be an HSU faculty member, your proposal must save students money for your class, and your proposal should be for a new class if you've participated in the Affordable Learning Solutions program before. You will submit this proposal, meet with the AL$ Team, and apply any recommended edits. Your Affordable Learning Solutions stipend will be contingent upon the acceptance of your proposal.

OER has an impact on student learning. The Humboldt State University Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) team at the Library interviewed several faculty about using OER in their courses. Here's what they had to share about the impact using OER has had on their students.

Thank you to the faculty generously gave their time to be interviewed and whose voices appeared in this video: Dr. Noah Zerbe, Kerry Marsden, Dr. Yoon G. Kim, Dr. Brandilynn Villarreal, Brandi Goodspeed, Nicolas R. Malloy, Dr. Troy Lescher, and Lonny Grafman.