Evaluating OER
Suggested Review Criteria
With so many freely available resources online, choosing OER can be overwhelming. The following criteria provide some suggestions for faculty when choosing resources for use in the classroom.
CONTENT
Comprehensiveness
The text covers all areas and ideas of the subject appropriately and provides an effective index and/or glossary.
Accuracy
Content is accurate, error-free and unbiased.
Relevance/Longevity
Content is up-to-date, but not in a way that will quickly make the text obsolete within a short period of time. The text is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement.
Clarity
The text is written in lucid, accessible prose, and provides adequate context for any jargon/technical terminology used.
Consistency
The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework.
Organization
The topics in the text are presented in a logical, clear fashion.
Grammatical Errors
The text contains no grammatical errors.
Cultural Relevance
The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. It should make use of examples that are inclusive of a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
FORMAT
Modularity
The text is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course (i.e., enormous blocks of text without subheadings should be avoided). The text should not be overly self-referential and should be easily reorganized and realigned with various sub-units of a course without presenting much disruption to the reader.
Interface
The text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.
Accessibility
All media content includes captioning and/or a transcript. Images, graphs and charts used to convey information include alternative text (alt text) descriptions. Written equations are properly interpreted by text-to-speech tools.
This rubric was developed by BCcampus. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Evaluation tools
Before use
- CUNY OER Evaluation and Selection Criteria
This list of criteria is suitable for any type of OER, including an open textbook or individual OER artifacts/objects. - Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects
Achieve partnered with OER Commons to develop an online evaluation tool to allow users to apply these rubrics and evaluate the quality of instructional resources. - Checklist for Evaluating Open Educational Resources
This evaluation checklist assists OER selection of relevant and available materials for potential adoption into your courses. - Accessibility Toolkit
A short checklist of suggested criteria from BCcampus. - Accessibility Evaluation Manual
The evaluation framework was designed to provide the accessibility community a systematic and easy-to-use method to add their comments and evaluations concerning the accessibility of COOL4Ed resources. - Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism (IDEA) Audit Framework
The ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative's Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism (IDEA) Framework was created to support faculty as they implement a culturally responsive and anti-racist pedagogy. - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in OER Rubric
Provides a rubric with DEI guiding principles and considerations when creating or evaluating OER.
After use
- Guidebook to Research on OER Adoption
A guide to assessment of OER adoption from the Open Education Group, including its impact on cost, student outcomes, use of resources, and perceptions of OER. - OER Review Project - Research Toolkit
The OER Research Toolkit from the Open Education Group provides a variety of resources to guide your research, including surveys for students and faculty.