Introduction to Open Educational Resource (OER) Publishing Tools & Platforms
Isabelle Antes
Learning Objectives
- Identify OER publishing tools
- Identify OER publication platforms
- Understanding OER publishing options
You’re Thinking About Creating an Open Educational Resource – But Which Publishing Tool is Right for You?
Finding your publishing tool may be simple, it may be something you already use, such as Canvas or the Canvas Commons or it might be something you haven’t used before such as Pressbooks or Github. As you are considering OER Creation, there are some amazing resources to support you in this process including:
- Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation
- The Creating OER section of the OER Creation Toolkit from the University of Regina has some amazing steps and processes to consider
- There are guides with consolidated lists of resources, like this OER for Faculty guide from UC San Diego and this one from the Council of Australian University Libraries about their Open Educational Resources Collective Publishing Workflow
- This section of Pub 101 on Universal Design for Learning
- Pub 101 also has a section on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Publishing that may be helpful
- Check out this guide for additional Open Educational Resource (OER) Authoring & Publishing Tools
A Note About Licensing
When creating, or remixing, materials it is important to consider the licenses these materials have attributed to them. You can find more information in our Copyright & Fair Use chapter as well as the Open Licensing and Creative Commons Licenses for Publishing chapter!
You’ve Created Something you want to share as an Open Educational Resource – What’s Next?
Congratulations on creating an Open Educational Resource! Now it’s time to share it! Depending on the format of your material, you can chose one of many publishing platforms.
What are Open Educational Resources (OER) Publishing Platforms?
Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform is a place where OER are involved in the 5R ecosystem- I.e. these are places where OER can be Retained, Reused, Revised, Remixed, and Redistributed. While the functions of these platforms can be similar, they can look drastically different.
- If you have created a Textbook, you can consider the Pressbooks platform
- For projects that include a variety of resources you can publish your course as a Canvas Shell to the Canvas Commons, as a Full Course in places like OERTX or the OER Commons
There are many more locations that you can publish your Open Educational Resource, these are simply a few to get you started!
A Few OER Platforms
- OERTX
- After you create an account, or sign-in, You can contribute in two ways:
- OER Commons
- After you create an account, or sign-in, you can contribute in two ways:
- Submit a Resource
- Create content through the Open Author Tool
- After you create an account, or sign-in, you can contribute in two ways:
- MERLOT
- After you create an account, or sign-in, you can contribute in two ways:
- Add Material to MERLOT
- Create Materials with Content Builder
- You can also create a Course Portfolio in MERLOT
- After you create an account, or sign-in, you can contribute in two ways:
- Pressbooks at Texas State University
- You Sign In with your SSO information and begin creating your book from there!
There are helpful User Guides & Getting Started with Pressbooks videos to show you the basics to orient yourself as you are creating and publishing content
Digging Deeper
Make an appointment with the Texas State University Libraries Digital Publishing Librarian or Open Educational Resource Librarian to get started on your project today!
