4.3 Extra OER evaluation tools
“Worldwide OER” by OPENLang Network licensed under CC BY 4.0.
As it was aforementioned, there are various evaluation tools (i.e., rubrics, guides) that are available for OER’s evaluation. You can find below other useful and well-known evaluation tools that you could use in order to check quickly the quality of your language OER:
UMGC OER Quality Guide: The OER Quality Guide produced by the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMCGC) is a tool to help evaluate the quality of OERs for use in any course. It examines resources through multiple lenses: compliance; content considerations; and technical factors. The UMGC OER Quality Guide Q&A offers additional information on this guide.
BC Guide for Evaluating Open Education Resources: This guide is a creation of the BCOER, a group of BC post secondary librarians working together to support the use of quality Open Educational Resources (OER). For more information about BCOER and its activities, go to open.bccampus.ca.
Affordable Learning Georgia OER Accessibility Evaluation Rubric: The Affordable Learning Georgia has developed a six-component checklist for evaluating OER. The rubric has a google form format and it is split into three sections: 1) Open Access, 2) Digital Access, and 3) Pedagogical Access.
ISKME Accessibility Checklist: This is a checklist of best practices for creating accessible resources which is adapted from BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit, CC-BY 4.0 International License.
➔ Before you create or search for an OER and then evaluate it ask yourself, what you want to do with this OER. This is important for the evaluation process.
➔ How do you begin? Check the OER’s licensing status first. If the item appears to be openly licensed (or its status is unclear), evaluate the resource against the proposed criteria. If the license is very restricted the resource is not really an OER.
➔ Keep in mind that by sharing language OERs of good quality you are contributing actively in the open education movement.
➔ Don’t forget to disseminate exemplary cases of quality language OERs, ROERs and directory of OERs or useful quality assessment OER tools.
Learning Activity 5
Reflecting on the quality criteria for Language OERs: After exploring the various evaluation tools for OERs proposed in this module, reflect on which criteria are the most important evaluation criteria for language OERs.
Additional Resources
You are invited to watch this useful video that explains how to find resources on OER Commons and evaluate them using the Achieve OER Evaluation Tool. For more info visit the Achieve’s channel to see more videos about the Evaluation Rubrics and how to apply them.
Check also this really interesting article, which analyses the role of open educational practice and culture by discussing the opportunities and dilemmas encountered in this rapidly evolving age of technology-enabled learning, as well as the key issues such as quality that must be addressed in opening up education.
Ossiannilsson, E., Altinay, Z., & Altinay, F. (2016). Transformation of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education towards Open Learning Arenas: A Question of Quality. In P. Blessinger & T. Bliss (Eds.), Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education (1st ed., pp. 159–178). Open Book Publishers. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1sq5v9n.13
References
Krajcso, Z. (2016). Classification and quality criteria for Open Educational Resources in the field of foreign language learning. Journal of Language and Cultural Education, 4(1), 48-59.
Perifanou, M. & Economides, A.A. (2020). Quality Framework for Language OERs. Research report, OPENLangNet project.
Learning Activity 6
2nd Week Discussion Forum Activity - Discovering Language OERs: In the second week’s study unit you are advised to post in the Discussion Forum and interact with members of our OER learning community. This task has two parts: In the first part you are kindly invited to visit a language OER repository, and search for one or two language OERs using specific filters (e.g., language of the OER, type of resource, proficiency level, etc.). In the second part you are invited to evaluate the language OER you found taking under consideration the OER evaluation criteria proposed by “OPENLang OER Evaluation Checklist” and finally share in the forum your opinion for the resources that you have found and evaluated! Don’t forget to give feedback to the other members of our language teachers’ OER community!