^{“Quality Language OER’ by OPENLang Network licensed under CC BY 4.0.}

Finding a language OER of good quality is a big challenge. Well-known OER repositories  (i.e., OER Commons, MERLOT, Open Textbook Library) go through peer-review to ensure the quality of the resources as in the case of traditional course materials. That means that there is a team of experts who are reviewing and evaluating every OER based on specific quality criteria before it is published online. This is a good way to reassure the OER’s quality. In many cases, OER repositories state their peer-review processes as well as provide the reviews online (i.e. MERLOT). It is important to note whether or not an OER has gone through peer-review when evaluating the resource before you choose to use it in your language course. 

OER repositories often offer the possibility of OER’s open evaluation by their users (i.e., OER commons, MERLOT) or provide a combination of initial peer-review or required criteria for inclusion in addition to open evaluations by users. 

Example 1: In the case of OER commons the users can evaluate a resource by rating it, adding a comment (fig. 1) or using the online evaluation tool created by Achieve to allow users to apply specific rubrics in order to evaluate the quality of instructional resources (fig.2) In fact Achieve partnered with OER Commons and developed eight rubrics in collaboration with leaders from the OER community.

Figure 1: OER commons search results for subject English Language Arts - Source: https://www.oercommons.org/browse?f.general_subject=english-language-arts

Figure 2: Sample of a language OER showcasing OER Common’s evaluation options - Source: https://www.oercommons.org/courses/100-word-memoir-oer-commons-version

Example 2: Textbooks in the Open Textbook Library are considered open because they are free to use and distribute, and are licensed to be freely adapted or changed with proper attribution. proposes specific criteria for publishing open books on their platform. The criteria for including new textbooks in the Open Textbook Library are the following:

• Openly licensed to allow for editing
• Complete textbook in a portable file
• Institutional or scholarly society affiliation, or used in more than one location
• Original (unless it's a major overhaul for a new audience)

You can find more related info here. You can also watch the following video, which is an overview of the library's history, criteria, book records and navigation:

Click here to download the video transcript (PDF) (53.6 KB)

The University of Michigan, Yale University, and other higher education institutions of high reputation provide open access to OERs which are developed and/ or used at their institutions. Whether or not they are peer-reviewed, their inclusion on the institutions' website indicates that the resources being used by the community of their teachers and it is an important quality criterion.

Learning Activity 3

Evaluate a language OER! You are invited to:

a) visit the OER Commons advanced research page,

b) enter keywords and use the search filters to find a language OER of your preference, 

c) explore its content & 

d) finally, evaluate it. You can add your rating, your comment and/or you can evaluate the OER by using the evaluation rubric that is proposed by the OER Commons repository.

Did you find the language OER that you were looking for?

Evaluation Tools for Language OER

If you wish to evaluate a language OER you can use various evaluation tools which are based on specific evaluation criteria. There is a vast research work on OER’s evaluation as well as a variety of rubrics and evaluation OER tools proposed or adopted by different OER repositories (i.e.,  Achieve rubric  adopted by OER commons as it was aforementioned). 

However, there are a few “quality assurance” models (i.e., Krajcso, 2016, etc.) proposed to language educators and learners for the selection of language OERs or for using specific language OER databases (i.e., the COERLL QA Model, the ECML QA Model, the ORTOLANG QA model, MERLOT QA Model, “KLASCEMENT QA Model, etc.).

The “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist” 

In this module you will explore and test the “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist” which has been created in the context of the “OPENLang Network project” in order to address the needs of language teachers who wish to control the quality of language OERs that they plan to use in different ways. These resources may be shared with a wider audience or a specific language teachers’ community or they may be used with their students in their teaching practice. The creation of this tool was based on the “OPENLang Quality Framework for Language OERs” (Perifanou & Economides, 2020).

Based on this framework, it has been created the “OPENLang OERs Evaluation Tool” which has the form of a rubric and aims to enable language teachers to evaluate the language OERs that they want to use, create or share with other language teachers in the OPENLang Network community or in other OER databases or communities. Language educators that use this rubric can give a score from 0 (zero) to 3 (three) to each of the evaluation criteria that are grouped in six (6) evaluation dimensions (content, pedagogy, design, usability, openness and technology). 

The “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist” is a complimentary evaluation tool that has the format of a simple checkbox and can be used by language educators, designers, librarians and learners who wish to do a complete & efficient quality control of any language OER they want to use. This evaluation tool can be used also as a guide by those who wish to create their own language OERs. 

How to use the “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist”: You can fill out your scores in the rubric shown in Table 1; score 0 (=strongly disagree), 1 (=somewhat disagree), 2 (=somewhat agree), or 3 (=strongly agree), to each statement presented in the following categories:

Table 1: “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist” (Perifanou & Economides, 2020)

Learning Activity 4

Try out the “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist”: You are invited to visit the MERLOT OER repository (Figure 3). After you search and find a language OER of your choice, evaluate it using the “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist”. Reflect how this evaluation process could help you find a quality language OER.

Figure 3: MERLOT OER repository - Source: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/