2.5 OER in Practice
Open Educational Resources represent a practical pathway to more accessible, adaptable, and student-centred education. This final section of your OER journey focuses on how to integrate OER into your teaching practice in sustainable, meaningful, and impactful ways that serve both your pedagogical goals and your students’ learning needs.
By now, you’ve explored how OER can:
- Provide legal freedoms for educational adaptation through understanding the 5Rs and open licensing that enable you to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute educational materials (Becoming Familiar With OER)
- Support efficient discovery of relevant resources through effective repository search strategies and quality evaluation frameworks that help you find materials aligned with your course goals (Discovery and Evaluation)
- Enable meaningful customisation through adaptation approaches that improve resource quality and contextualize content for your specific students and teaching environment (Adaptation and Customisation)
Now, it’s time to consider how these capabilities can be integrated into your teaching practice and course design, creating learning experiences that are both more accessible for students and more aligned with your pedagogical values.
Your OER Journey: Where You Stand Now
Before planning implementation steps, let’s acknowledge the learning journey you’ve completed throughout this section. You’ve been developing both conceptual understanding and practical skills for working with open educational resources.
You’ve explored Foundational concepts
- The difference between open, free, and publicly available educational resources
- How the 5Rs (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute) create practical freedoms for educational adaptation
- The role of Creative Commons and other open licensing in enabling legal reuse and modification
- How OER support the broader principles of accessible, effective, and equitable education
You’ve Developed Practical Capabilities
- Hands-on experience with repository searching and advanced filtering strategies
- Skills in evaluating OER quality using established frameworks and criteria
- Understanding of customisation approaches from improvement to contextualization
- Ability to plan realistic OER implementation strategies for your teaching context
Open Education Principles in Practice
Your implementation of OER represents a concrete application of the open education principles you explored at the beginning of your journey. When you adopt, adapt, and share open educational resources, you’re actively creating more accessible, effective, and equitable learning experiences:
Accessibility in Action: OER eliminate cost barriers that prevent students from accessing course materials while providing flexibility to create multiple formats and approaches that serve diverse learning needs. When you choose open resources and adapt them for accessibility, you ensure all students can engage with course content from day one.
Effectiveness Through Customisation: OER enable you to create learning materials that perfectly align with your course objectives, student population, and teaching approach. When you adapt resources to include relevant examples, current information, and appropriate complexity levels, you enhance the effectiveness of student learning experiences.
Equity Through Inclusive Content: OER provide the legal freedom to modify materials to include diverse perspectives, culturally relevant examples, and multiple ways of engaging with content. When you customise resources to reflect your students’ backgrounds and experiences, you create more inclusive learning environments.
All three together transform course materials:
Rather than choosing between accessible, effective, or equitable resources, OER enable you to create materials that achieve all three goals simultaneously. When you can adapt resources to remove barriers, customise content for your context, and include diverse perspectives, you’re designing course materials that truly serve all learners.
Common Concerns about Getting Started
Faculty moving from OER exploration to actual implementation often encounter concerns about sustainability, quality control, and measuring student impact. This is where abstract possibilities meet concrete classroom realities—time constraints become more pressing, quality assurance becomes your responsibility, and questions about student benefit demand evidence rather than hope:
“I’m not sure where to start implementing OER in my existing courses.”
Begin with your biggest pain points—expensive textbooks, outdated materials, or resources that don’t quite fit your needs. Start by replacing one problematic resource rather than attempting a complete course overhaul. Even partial OER adoption can have a significant impact on students while building your confidence and skills.
“I’m concerned about the time investment required for finding and adapting OER.”
Like any new skill, OER adoption becomes more efficient with practice. The initial time investment often pays dividends through reduced material costs, better alignment with course goals, and reusable resources that improve over time. Start with existing high-quality OER that need minimal adaptation before moving to more complex customisation projects.
“I want to ensure my OER choices maintain academic rigour and quality.”
Quality depends on evaluation criteria rather than access model—many OER undergo the same rigorous review processes as traditional materials. Use the assessment frameworks you’ve learned to evaluate content, accuracy, and pedagogical effectiveness. Remember that open licensing allows you to improve the quality issues you identify rather than being stuck with them.
“I’m not sure how to measure whether OER implementation is actually benefiting my students.”
Look for multiple indicators, including student feedback about material accessibility and relevance, engagement with course content, academic performance, and retention of learning. Many faculty also find that OER adoption leads to increased student participation and more inclusive classroom discussions.
Practical Strategies
Here are manageable approaches to begin integrating OER into your teaching practice:
- Identify one course where OER could address a specific challenge (high textbook costs, outdated materials, lack of diverse perspectives) and start there
- Begin with high-quality, established OER that need minimal adaptation before moving to more complex customisation projects
- Connect with colleagues who have experience with OER in your discipline to learn from their successes and challenges
- Document your OER journey through brief reflections about what works, what doesn’t, and what you learn along the way
- Seek student feedback about their experience with open resources and use their insights to guide future OER decisions
- Build gradually from single resource replacements toward more comprehensive OER adoption as you gain experience and confidence
Section Completion Milestone
Select an OER
Task: Select an OER for one of your courses and plan for its potential adoption.
Identify and link to a specific OER that could replace or supplement materials in one of your courses. If you have already adopted an OER in your course, feel free to use that for this completion milestone.
Provide basic information: course name, what the OER replaces, source repository, and licensing terms.
Reflect on the search process, addressing
- Why did you select this particular OER for your course
- How would you plan to use this resource with students
OER Evaluation
Use the rubric below to evaluate your OER selection across key areas like relevance, quality, and potential for integration.
| Category | Needs Improvement (1 pt) | Developing (2pts) | Good (3pts) | Excellent (4 pts) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content Alignment – How well does the OER align with your course objectives and structure? | Content loosely related to course objectives; would require major redesign or substantial additional materials | Content supports some learning objectives; would require moderate course adjustments or supplementation | Content supports most learning objectives and would fit well with minor course adjustments | Content directly supports all major learning objectives and would integrate seamlessly with the course structure |
| Accuracy & Currency – Is the information reliable and current for your field? | Information contains noticeable errors or outdated content that could impact learning | Information is generally accurate, but shows some outdated content or minor errors | Information is mostly accurate, with minor issues that wouldn’t affect learning | Information appears factually accurate, current, and error-free |
| Accessibility – Could all your students access and use this resource effectively? | Limited accessibility is evident; significant potential barriers for students with diverse needs | Basic accessibility features are present; some barriers might exist for certain students | Available in appropriate formats; mostly accessible with minor potential limitations | Multiple formats available; appears fully accessible; inclusive design evident |
| Quality Assessment – How would you rate the overall production quality of this OER? | Poor quality; significant issues with presentation, organisation, or usability | Adequate quality; some production or organisational issues that could be addressed | Good quality with professional standards; minor presentation issues | Excellent production quality; professional presentation; clear organisation |
| Licensing & Permissions – How well do the licensing terms support your intended use? | Restrictive licensing that significantly limits educational use or adaptation | Open license with some restrictions that might limit desired adaptations | Open license with minor restrictions that don’t affect planned use | CC BY or CC BY-SA; maximum flexibility for adaptation and sharing |
| Selection Process – How confident are you in your OER selection and evaluation? | Not confident; limited evaluation; significant uncertainties about appropriateness | Somewhat confident; basic evaluation completed; some concerns remain | Confident; good evaluation process; minor uncertainties about fit | Very confident; used systematic evaluation criteria; clear rationale for choice |
Reflect on Evaluation Process
Reflect on the evaluation process, addressing
- Which evaluation criterion was most important in your selection decision?
- What questions would you want to explore further before implementing this OER?
- What adaptations might you make to better fit your context
- What you’ve learned about OER evaluation and selection through this process
Moving Forward in Your Open Education Journey
Your engagement with open educational resources represents a commitment to more accessible, adaptable, and student-centred education. The knowledge and skills you’ve developed—understanding open licensing, evaluating resource quality, customising materials for your context—provide a foundation for ongoing innovation in your teaching practice.
OER adoption is not a one-time decision but an ongoing process of discovery, experimentation, and refinement. As you implement open resources, you’ll discover what works best for your students, your discipline, and your teaching approach. Each course offers opportunities to build your OER expertise while creating more inclusive and effective learning experiences.
Remember that OER adoption is fundamentally collaborative. The resources you use were created by educators committed to sharing knowledge, and your own adaptations and feedback contribute to the ongoing improvement of educational materials. When you share your experiences with colleagues or contribute to OER communities, you help advance the broader movement toward more open and equitable education.
The skills you develop through OER implementation—evaluating educational resources, adapting materials for diverse learners, collaborating with educational communities—will serve you well regardless of how educational technology and publishing evolve over time. Most importantly, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your course materials are accessible to all students while perfectly aligned with your pedagogical goals.
What’s Next
Your exploration of OER provides a strong foundation for the next phase of your open education journey. Building on your understanding of how to find, evaluate, and adapt open educational resources, you’re now ready to explore how Open Pedagogy can transform not just the materials you use, but how learning happens in your courses.
Open pedagogy builds on the principles of openness, collaboration, and student empowerment that drive OER adoption. Where OER focus on making educational resources more accessible and adaptable, open pedagogy focuses on making the learning process more collaborative, authentic, and empowering for students.
In the next section, you’ll discover how to create learning experiences where students become active creators of knowledge rather than passive consumers, where courses connect to real-world communities and authentic audiences, and where the values of accessibility, effectiveness, and equity guide every aspect of course design and classroom interaction.
