Guidelines for Creating and Sharing Open Educational Resources
1. Design for Openness
It is important to ensure you have permission to publish all of the content in your materials. If you use third-party content, make sure to address copyright considerations in the following ways:
- Use Creative Commons search Links to an external site. to find openly licensed content to re-mix with your materials.
- Attribute all content properly. OpenAttribute Links to an external site. is a browser plug-in that makes this easier.
- If you plan to use any copyrighted materials, be sure to check out the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare. Links to an external site.
2. Choose a License
A Creative Commons license Links to an external site. provides the legal framework to share your materials. Attribution is always a requirement, and the author can decide whether or not to open it up to remixing and/or commercial use. If possible, embed the license HTML code in your webpage to allow it your materials to appear in Creative Commons search results.
3. Publish
Make your materials available online at a publically-available URL. If you aren't able to publish to your own website, you can use one of the following options.
Sites to upload and share your materials:
- Google Docs Links to an external site. for sharing documents (lesson plans, activities, instructional materials, etc.). Once you have uploaded your materials, get a public URL for a document or collection of documents by changing the sharing settings to "Public on the Web".
- Slideshare for sharing presentation slides.
- YouTube Links to an external site. or TeacherTube Links to an external site. for sharing videos. Be sure to select the Creative Commons license option when uploading your videos to YouTube.
- Internet Archive Links to an external site. can be used to upload and store any digital materials.
- WordPress Links to an external site., Links to an external site.Blogger Links to an external site., Links to an external site.and Tumblr Links to an external site. offer free blogs that can be used to publish and share educational content.
Sites to create and share materials directly in an educational repository:
- Open Author from OER Commons Links to an external site.
- Connexions Links to an external site.
- TedEd Links to an external site.
- WikiEducator Links to an external site.
- MERLOT Content Builder Links to an external site.
4. Share
Submit your resources to one or more Open Educational Resource repositories. This allows other educators to find and build on your materials.
- MERLOT Links to an external site.
- OER Commons Links to an external site.
- Languages Open Resources Online (LORO) Links to an external site.
Additional Resources
For more information and ideas on developing OER, see: