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 to find openly licensed content to re-mix with your materials.
Attribute all content properly. OpenAttribute 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.

2. Choose a License

A Creative Commons license 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 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 or TeacherTube for sharing videos. Be sure to select the Creative Commons license option when uploading your videos to YouTube.
Internet Archive can be used to upload and store any digital materials.
WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr 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
Connexions
TedEd
WikiEducator
MERLOT Content Builder

4. Share

Submit your resources to one or more Open Educational Resource repositories. This allows other educators to find and build on your materials.

Additional Resources

For more information and ideas on developing OER, see: