Digilego Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are, typically, digital materials freely available to assist in teaching or self-study. OERs can vary greatly in size and applicability. They can be part of a lesson, used as priming for a teaching session, used during a session, or shared with students following sessions to reinforce or supplement learning (e.g. provide alternative perspectives), potentially using different mediums.

As part of the digilego project, we defined five types of OERs:

• Pieces: sample material for frequently used standardized methods that can be integrated into lesson plans or teaching units. These can be in different formats.
• Templates: Lesson or video scripts and content ready to use for the creation of personalized teaching material
• Instructions: Self-training manuals on how to generate digital teaching resources for university teachers
• Catalogues: Collections of ideas and short case studies of different teaching approaches and examples based on primary and secondary sources
• Packages: Ready-to-use full packages that can be used as stand-alone teaching units, such as virtual field-trips.

Criteria and guiding principles

To guide development of OERs, project collaborators engaged in workshop discussions and ongoing conversations around criteria and principles that should guide the OER generation process. Review of criteria and principles continued throughout the OER development process. We stipulate a series of considerations in the aim of creating high quality OERs and their integration into the digital platform (https://digilego.eu). The following criteria are meant to guide collaborators and higher education teachers in preparing and developing inclusive and accessible teaching and learning resources. Considerations must be selectively applied and are provided here to be helpful rather than constraining.

Style & formatting

Has the OER:

• been proof-read?
• appropriately referenced all sources?
• integrated photographs, graphics, audio, and video files of adequate quality (i.e., not too large a file but sufficient quality) with appropriate licenses attached?
• made available resources in different (open access) formats (e.g., literature lists, presentations, text document)?

Inclusivity & diversity

Does the OER:

• include resources and references from marginalized voices (e. g. scholars from the Global South, women)?
• include material / examples representing different contexts and perspectives?
• provide ideas and information on how to address issues of inclusivity and diversity in methods teaching?
• include a variety of formats or ideas on delivery formats to accommodate different learner types and perspectives (e.g., visual, text, auditory, animation, interaction)?
• use inclusive language?
• provide different languages?
• meet inclusive design standards

Quality assurance

• Have learners/students been involved at different stages of the OER generation process?
• Has the OER been tested and evaluated by students as part of teaching modules or a test group?
• Has the feedback from testing been evaluated and used to improve the OER where applicable or when possible?

Platform integration

• Have the files of completed OERs and /or OER bundles been structured and named following agreed upon conventions?
• Where relevant, has the development of the methods over time been traced and considered?
• Are existing related OER identified and referred to (linked)?
• Is the OER applicable and/or transferable to different national contexts and institutions? If not, is this clearly communicated?
• Have keywords and/or tags to describe and cross-referencing the OER been included? These keywords can be used to link thematic sets or relate to cross-cutting methods (e.g., sample data, lesson plan, creating teaching resources, templates).
• Are target groups / levels clearly communicated? (e.g. B.Sc. or M.Sc., beginner/intermediate/advanced familiarity with concepts)
• Has the OER been peer reviewed? (Handled by the platform)

The criteria listed here are not considered fixed but should be understand as an open invitation for those interested in OER generation and teaching to join conversations, augment and edit. If you would like to contribute, please contact the digilego team.