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Open Educational Resources (OER)

Designed for educators at the University of Missouri, this guide covers ways to find and create Open Educational Resources (OER).

Taking a Team Approach to OER Support

Are you ready to explore alternatives to overpriced textbooks? Our team-based approach will connect you with a subject librarian, a bookstore administrator, and other experts on campus who help you locate, evaluate, adopt, adapt, or even create affordable and open educational resources (A&OER) for your courses. 

Once you answer a few brief questions in our A&OER Team Consultation Request Form, a team of specialists will begin the work of identifying open, freely available, and affordable textbooks, courseware, and other materials that meet your instructional needs.

Once you've selected new materials for your course, your team will guide you through the process of integrating these materials into Canvas, reporting required and recommended materials to the bookstore, and hosting newly created resources in the MOspace and OER Commons.

The Process

Here's how it works:

  • Complete the A&OER Team Consultation Request Form. Your answers to this simple, one-page questionnaire will help your support team understand your specific needs.
  • We will form a small support team (3 to 5 people) of librarians, bookstore administrators, instructional designers, and / or educational technologists who are familiar with your course, department, and materials in your discipline.
  • Team members will review your request and begin identifying open textbooks, affordable (<$40) textbooks, government documents, library materials, and items in the public domain that might meet your needs.
  • Your team may ask for a copy of your syllabus, titles and ISBNs of texts that have been required or recommended for your course in past semesters, and / or any A&OER titles or repositories that you are familiar with or have already reviewed.
  • A representative from your support team will work with you to identify a good time to meet in person or virtually. In this meeting, your team will present you with open, freely available, and / or affordable educational resources that could be a good fit for your course. By the end, you and the your support team will have identified your next steps for evaluating materials, integrating them into your course, and reporting them to the campus bookstore.
  • A team member will be selected to stay in touch with you after the meeting to answer follow-up questions and to ensure that your needs are met.

Team Composition

Depending on your discipline and specific needs, your A&OER support team may consist of one or more of the following specialists:

From the University Libraries:

  • Your subject librarian, who has expertise in copyright, citation metrics, citation managers, data management, literature reviews, open access, digital repositories, and more.
  • Other MU librarians with specialized knowledge of OER, government information in the public domain, and copyright and fair use considerations.
  • Our Head of Digital Services and Digital Scholarship Librarian, who can help creators host their new OER in the MOspace Institutional Repository and share their work through OER Commons.

From The Mizzou Store:

  • A bookstore administrator who has expertise in the offerings of more than 20 major publishers and who can provide guidance on creating custom course packets and making digital materials easily accessible via AutoAccess.

 

Need Help?

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Jeannette Pierce
Contact:
573-882-6450