Evaluating resources

As with any educational resources you use, OER need to be evaluated before use. The process of using and evaluating OER is not that different from evaluating traditional ‘all rights reserved’ copyright resources. Whether education materials are openly licensed or closed, you and your colleagues are the best judge of quality, as you know what students need and how a resource will be used.

Let’s take a closer look at what you might want to consider when assessing educational materials. JISC provides a list of criteria for assessment of quality [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] :

• accuracy
• reputation of author/institution
• standard of technical production
• accessibility
• fitness for purpose.

One important consideration when evaluating OER is whether you intend to adapt or make changes to the material by combining it with other openly licensed resources. As we’ll see in the next unit, some CC licence types cannot be combined to create new resources because their licences are incompatible. This means that if you are looking for openly licensed material to adapt, you need to be particularly mindful of the licence type of the resources you select. This means that you need to think ahead! The role of librarians, ICT and support staff is particularly important in this respect, because you can support teachers in selecting material and ensure that it is fit for purpose, depending on what it is needed for.

When you evaluate resources, you may also want to consider the format of the resource. Myanmar is often described as a ‘mobile-first country’, but unfortunately not all OER are currently optimised for use on mobile devices. If you are a technical member of staff, you may be able to support colleagues in choosing the most appropriate OER and advising further on this aspect.