Become the Author of Your Own Educational Resources

Reading Time: 8 minutes

All of us, at some point in our school lives, were fortunate enough to take a class with a teacher who masterfully explained a topic (which truly we had not understood until the day that we took that class with him or her). It was a magical moment (aha!) that we will never forget. Indeed, learning from the experience of teachers is fabulous and better than knowing their reputation by recognizing their first and last names. Open educational resources (OER) are ideal for disseminating knowledge and identifying the work of those who do it. They are also a way for teachers themselves to share and collaborate to improve teaching.

In our webinar of November 2019, Professor Antonio Canchola shared a general procedure that guides teachers as a first approach to create and share open OER educational resources. He also answered several questions from our audience; for example, “Do open educational materials replace printed materials? What advantages does OER have for the Mexican educational system? Does OER also include research articles? Can a blog serve as an OER? Can I add a Creative Commons license to my PowerPoint presentation? How do I create or search for Creative Commons licensed videos on YouTube and Google? Find out the answers to these questions and more in this article.

Below, we share interesting information from the profile of our audience:

Webinar Audience: Three steps to becoming an author of open educational resources
Infogram

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, or research materials that are in the public domain or are published with free intellectual property licenses that facilitate their free use, adaptation, and distribution.” – UNESCO 2019 –

Questions and Answers

Webinar: Three steps to becoming an author of open educational resources

Do open educational materials replace printed material? (Manuel Lozano, Perú)

AC: No. One doesn’t eliminate the other; rather, they complement each other. An example is the text of Stephen Hawking’s typed thesis. Previously, we could only find it in Cambridge. As we do not all have the privilege to travel to Cambridge to consult his thesis, it is wonderful to be able to access a digitalized version from public access. The thesis is in physics and is a treasure, but it does not mean that by being digitalized, it no longer serves as a written thesis. The same is true for the materials, questionnaires, or content text that teachers create. It means that the materials will be open and accessible to other people.

2. Is there a reference that explains how to create an OER and disseminate it massively? (Kilver García, Perú)

AC: In this webinar, I will share with you a general procedure that serves as a first approach to creating an OER and then “massify” it. How to “massify it” has to do with the repository. There are institutional, thematic, and educational resource repositories that are exclusively for open resources. So, if you already have your material, you can follow the guide that I will share here.

3. To be called an OER, what does it have to do to satisfy that type of license? (Anonymous)

AC: To be an Open Educational Resource (OER), it has to meet three features: 1) that it is an original educational resource 2) that it has a license chosen by you where you tell users explicitly how they can use it, and 3) that it is available in an OER repository.

4. Is it necessary for the creator or author to have a degree in Education to create an OER? (Anonymous)

AC: The answer is No. You don’t have to have an academic degree; the only thing necessary is to comply with three characteristics: 1) that the resource you created, (document, video, or text) is yours and original, 2) that you choose one of the six Creative Commons licenses, and 3) that is available digitally in a repository. So, for that, you don’t need a college degree. You don’t need to be a professional; you don’t need to be a Doctor in Education, you don’t need to be a teacher in pedagogy, you don’t need to be licensed in Primary or a normal professor. It is not necessary.

5. Could anthologies and guides to study Polynesian and Arabic dance be an OER? (Martha Romero, México)

AC: Of course. To be an OER, you must meet three basic requirements. The first is to have the material that you already created for the teaching of Polynesian dance in text, drawing, or video. So far, so good. Now, to upload it to the open educational resource category, you have to select one of the six Creative Commons licenses that I showed you in my presentation. You decide, for example, 1) I want only recognition 2) I want others to be able to share it. Still, without making any modifications, or 3) I want to give others the freedom to make money from this material. Then, choose the license that suits your purposes the best, and put it in the document or video. Now, for it to become “open,” you have to find a repository like the ones I showed you in the presentation and upload your material. Once “placed” in the repository, at that time, the “anthology” of Polynesian dances is an open educational resource. OER are not exclusive to curricular topics. For example, if you are a teacher of Polynesian dances, pastry chef, carpenter, musician, or if you created a new technique, and want to share your contribution (you must fulfill the purpose of teaching or learning), with these three conditions, that material can already be considered an open educational resource. That is the spirit of sharing your work so that it becomes visible and useful to other teachers.

6. If I published PowerPoint presentations on a portal like SlideShare, are these content that can be managed under a Creative Commons license? (Luis Fernando Ávila, México)

AC: Of course. For example, the presentation I just showed you in this webinar became itself an open educational resource after I uploaded it to the Monterrey Technological Institute Repository (RITEC) so that now you or anyone else can download it. So, in your case, what you would have to do is “download” that resource you uploaded on the SlideShare page (in other words, remove it from there). After that, go to the Creative Commons page to see the six licenses that exist, and select one of them. Then copy the license you selected on each slide in your original presentation, and when you’re done, upload it again. This way, you let users know what they can do with the material you created; for example, they can copy it; can share it; they can transform it, and even market it. If you don’t explicitly add the license in the document, anyone could “hijack your material.” Of course, there are also legal issues to consider, but it is better to protect the content that you created by adding a license, which, as you saw, is very simple.

7. Are blogs from a website considered to be a resource material suitable for usability through a license? (Omar Rueda, Colombia
)

AC: That’s right. Let’s suppose that you are a professor of political science, and in your blog, you address certain topics. Suddenly you say, “Well, my text or the opinion that I posted in this blog is my creation.” You can consider licensing it because you created the content that is in the blog. If you put a photograph that is not yours, I recommend you put the reference. You have to give people their recognition. When you see my presentation, the photographs I used have references showing where I got them. Then we need to add the references or the links from where we obtained information. Continuing with the point of your blog or website, you can be open-access through a license, adding in writing your privacy notice. If the texts are your creation, fine, whatever else you integrate into the material, such as photographs, videos, or something that you did not generate, you must add where you got the information from. Generally, at the bottom is where the license is shown, and you should mention what users might do with your creation, in this case, political or educational opinions.

8. Which technological resources are currently used for face-to-face and virtual education? (Víctor Ferreira, Bolivia)

AC: There are many resources; for example, the one we are using right now is the Zoom platform from Facebook; it is great for making video conferences. Social media is also used for education. Even a photograph with its proper license is an educational resource, and we can make it open; that is, other people can use that same photograph. There are platforms such as Pixabay, where you can find photos with the Creative Commons license that allow you to use, change, or transform them, depending on the type of license. There are many tools available for traditional face-to-face learning (which teachers already dominate). For digital or technological learning, I recommend platforms like Pixabay where you can obtain photographs, tools to make video conferences like Zoom, and you can use social networks in the instruction of your students.

9. Do OERs also include research texts? (Anonymous)

AC: Not necessarily, because you can’t modify a research text, and it has another evaluation process. Besides, I don’t want to give a presentation so that, later, someone else changes it and uses it. That’s not the point of research. Those are two different things.

10. What are the advantages of OER in a Mexican educational system? (Anonymous)

AC: Many benefits, among which I can mention using the strategies of another teacher who manages them very well, who already analyzed them and revised them; then, you as a teacher will incorporate it into your activity, and you would not have to design it from scratch. This advantages you in time, costs, and sometimes in creativity; for example, if you do not know how to draw, but another teacher draws very well, you can use his drawing and reference their work as well.

11. Which OER repositories do you recommend? (Anonymous)

AC:

Temoa www.temoa.org from Tecnológico de Monterrey.
Open Resource Repositories ORR (Ceibal) is an organization from Uruguay.
Colombia Learns, The network of knowledge.

12. How do I handle Creative Commons licenses on something I created on YouTube? (Emma Rodríguez, México)

AC: YouTube is a repository of audiovisual content, although not necessarily educational, and you can search for Creative Commons videos in the following option or path: YouTube > Search > Filter > Features > Creative Commons. You can also upload videos to YouTube with a Creative Commons license. You create your videos, and when you edit them at the end, you select the license of your choice; when you upload them to YouTube, there you also mark the license that you are assigning. You can do the same in Google by searching for videos that exist under Creative Commons licenses as follows: Google > Search > Preferences > Advanced Search > Usage Rights > Creative Commons.

13. If we create an OER with proprietary software, is it considered an OER? (Dany Vargas, Bolivia)

AC: Here, the idea is that if you use software to create an educational resource, do not download the software illegally; that is not the idea. If you purchase a software license and use it, you are already a licensed user of that software, and there is no restriction. What you can also do to make your work even more transparent and remain calm is to put a note at the end that says something like, “This material was created with (the name of the software.)”

14. To what institution is the speaker ascribed? (Brenda Chávez)

AC: I am currently in the doctorate program in Educational Innovation at Tecnologico de Monterrey. My line of research is the education of adults, especially digital literacy, and, obviously, digital skills. I am at the Monterrey campus of Tecnologico de Monterrey, and I am studying the second year of four of the doctorate. We are working to develop the issue of open educational resources further. I also promote the theme of the open educational resources of the UNESCO Chair. Every two years in Monterrey, this phenomenal event where people from all countries meet and discuss precisely these issues is held at Tec. I have also taught workshops at different universities. In the Repository of Instituto del Tecnológico de Monterrey, you can search my name and consult the OER I’ve developed, including this presentation.

15. What is the best rule for categorizing? (German, México)

AC: That has to do with what is known as the interoperability of repositories. I suggest you enter the Repository of Instituto del Tecnológico de Monterrey and review the thesis of Dr. Laura González University of Salamanca. She discusses the differences among the types of repository and cataloging systems, and she also notes which ones might be best and evaluates them.

16. Are you aware of OER production protocols that address the particularities of digital literacy and cultural competencies for farming families? (Beatriz Castro, Argentina)

AC: My line of research is adult digital literacy. I share my email antonio.canchola@hotmail.com to stay in touch later, and I also share this repository that gathers agricultural material that can be of use to you.

Finally, I share other publications related to this topic that may be of interest to you:

● Open books: a powerful educational tool, but little used (Kenneth Bauer)

● Open pedagogy is key to improving teaching practices (Kenneth Bauer)

● Three steps to becoming an author of open educational resources (Antonio Canchola)

● Open educational resources improve academic performance (Christian Guijosa)