3 Selecting OER 

With such a large number of OER available, it can be difficult to find OER that are useful to you. As a first step, it’s important to think about the criteria that you will use in selecting useful OER, including its appropriateness, adaptability and quality. The TESS-India OER have undergone a process of critical review and quality assurance, but not all OER have undergone a quality assurance process. Therefore, it is important to judge the quality of the OER.

In the Open University course Creating open educational resources [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , a useful OER, is described as being:

• findable, it can be in multiple locations, making it easy to locate 
• clearly described, so that you can quickly assess whether it will be useful for you and/or your teacher learners
• clearly licensed (usually through Creative Commons), which tells you if you can adapt the OER and other conditions of use
• from a source you trust
• being used/recommended by people like you
• easy to modify for your students
• free-standing, so it does not assume knowledge of other resources and is easier to integrate into a course or learning episode
• imperfect – it just needs to work for you and/or your teacher learners.

You can also find this list in the document ‘Criteria for Evaluating OER’.

You should also consider the view of learning that informs the OER and whether this is in line with the shifts in teaching and learning processes that you want to support.