How+can+I+help+academics+find+OERs?

//Lots of ideas...now let's get down to business. How do you find a good OER? Easier to start with how to find an OER, and then get to working out if it's any good or not. OERs are typically found in repositories of resources, either located in an individual university or in an organisation housing resources from a variety of sources. Universities tend to focus on sharing their own materials for free, as in the case of MITOpenCourseWare, who were right at the forefront of the OER movement, or Open University. Other repositories sometimes focus on OERs from a particular country, discipline or level of education. So an important first step is just refining the repositories that you are interested in - narrowing that focus down to a handful of places where you know you can look for quality resources in your area. That in itself makes the job much less daunting.//

//Heads up - some useful things to do at this stage//
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 * While repositories are important, OERs can also be found with general searches. If you're not familiar with G oogle’s Advanced Search, try it now. The Advanced Search allows you to restrict your results to Creative Commons licensed material by setting the filter in the ‘usage rights’ field to ‘free to use share or modify’. Here's a simple demo video from the man himself, Dave Wiley, for Open Education Week in 2012. You might, for example, want to search for an image you've been after in this way.


 * Narrow your search by developing a clear strategy for defining what you want to find. What search terms will you use? Getting those terms right will help your search no end. As a starting point, you should include the discipline area, content type (different levels of granularity e.g. business, marking, strategy development, x theory), type of media, and level of education. You might also include the learning and teaching strategy (e.g. if you are looking for a group project task).
 * Compile a list of sites / repositories that you want to explore from the lists below. Do the aims of the site meet your needs? What are your initial impressions?
 * Pick out a couple of repositories that you think will offer the most promise for you / your School's discipline area. Explore their search engines, and see if you can find at least one OER that has potential for reuse or remixing.
 * Think about where you're going to store any OERs that you find (yes, we've mentioned this before). A social bookmarking site that can be shared and annotated is ideal. Whatever you choose, think about developing a collaborative space where your academics can become involved and help in the search, finding useful resources for each other.
 * As you search for OERs, think about the criteria you'll use to evaluate its quality. More about this in the next page. As a 'heads up', t he OER Handbook suggests you complete an initial check for completeness, appropriateness and quality for your context, and notes that:
 * you should be prepared to undertake significant customisation for the OER to be effective in your local context, and
 * as OERs are largely developed by volunteers, there's great variance in the topics and types of OERs that are available. Also, each repository handles quality control differently - some are quite selective, others less so. Some indicate through feedback mechanisms which resources others have found valuable. Others don't. So finding a quality OER can be difficult or frustrating. It becomes easier once you start to refine down the repositories that are best for your discipline area.

=OER respositories= There are many good lists of repositories out there. Two that are quite useful are from, and WikiEducator's Exemplary collection of open elearning content repositories , which not only details general repositories but also those for specific disciplines.

As an alternativeYou might also like to work through the WikiEducator tutorial on searching., which includes information on media-specific searches.

A simpler approach would be to read through this useful infographic (shown right) created by Rachel Gilg at the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) at the University of Texas. Yes, it's focused on language learning, but the principles are the same.

Just want to start with some of the big ones, to get a feel for the area? Then pick from some of these:
 * OER Commons - Comprehensive, though ranging from K-HE. Uses tags, ratings, comments, reviews etc to help you quickly narrow down quality content.
 * MERLOT - Thousands of online learning materials, peer reviews, learning assignments, and user comments, organized by discipline into specific discipline communities.
 * Jorum - UK-based, easy searching by discipline, clearly shows the CC license applied.
 * Open Courseware Directory - acts as a gateway for discipline specific repositories
 * The Australian Flexible Learning Network - focused on TAFE sector, but still some useful resources here.

You might also like to go to some specific lists of repositories (from the OER Handbook on WikiEducator):
 * [|Science Repositories]
 * [|Science Repositories (table format)]
 * [|Social Science Repositories]
 * [|Social science repositories (table format)]
 * [|Humanities Repositories]
 * [|Humanities repositories (table format)]
 * [|Open Textbooks]
 * [|Open Textbooks (table format)]
 * [|Individual project sites]

TIP: There are many, many repositories out there. You might find the core ones do it for you, or maybe you'll find gems for your interest area in some of the smaller ones. The aim starting out is to get a feel for those repositories that are best for your area, and keep a list of these somewhere (again, I'd suggest a social bookmarking site for your School). Gradually expand and refine this list over time, crossing off those that don't suit your purposes.

=Resources for reuse with academics=


 * [[file:Basic-Guide-To-OER - repositories.pdf]] Selected pages from COL's basic guide to OERs, an annotated list of repositories.
 * How to search for OERs (infographic, created for language learning but applicable to other disciplines)


 * For learners locating their own OERs:**
 * 21C search tool - great for helping students to learn about advanced searching
 * 21C Evaluation wizard - useful for quick evaluation of sites. Has printout option if students are required to hand in evidence of evaluation.

= Further reading =
 * COL's guide to finding OERs - good for finding repositories in other languages and for developing countries (as well as the usual suspects!)
 * How to find OERs on the Internet (article)
 * How to find OERs (a useful blog post, with tips and links for general, photo, video and music searches, as well as for distinctly educational material, including recorded lectures and video tutorials, open textbooks, simulations and animations, course modules, and complete courses.